Every prince has his secrets. And she’s determined to unravel his...
Every young man in London’s ton is vying for Lady Caroline Hawke’s hand—except one. Handsome roué Prince Leopold of Alucia can’t quite remember Caroline’s name, and the insult is not to be tolerated. So Caroline does what any clever, resourceful lady of means would do to make sure Leo never again forgets: sees that scandalous morsels about his reputation are printed in a ladies’ gossip gazette...all while secretly setting her cap for the rakish royal.
Someone has been painting Leo as a blackguard, but who? Socially, it is ruining him. More important, it jeopardizes his investigation into a contemptible scheme that reaches the highest levels of British government. Leo needs Lady Caroline’s help to regain access to society. But this charming prince is about to discover that enlisting the deceptively sweet and sexy Lady Caroline might just cost him his heart, his soul and both their reputations...
Praise for New York Times bestselling author
Julia London
“Julia London writes vibrant, emotional stories and sexy, richly drawn characters.”
—Madeline Hunter, New York Times bestselling author
“[E]nticing from the very first page!”
—Publishers Weekly on Seduced by a Scot
“Warm, witty and decidedly wicked—great entertainment.”
—Stephanie Laurens, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on Hard-Hearted Highlander
“An absorbing read from a novelist at the top of her game.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot
“Expert storytelling and believable characters make the romance [one that] readers will be sad to leave behind.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot
“London is at the top of her game in this thrilling tale of political intrigue and second chances.”
—Booklist, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot
Also available from Julia London and HQN
A Royal Wedding
The Princess Plan
The Cabot Sisters
The Trouble with Honor
The Devil Takes a Bride
The Scoundrel and the Debutante
The Highland Grooms
Wild Wicked Scot
Sinful Scottish Laird
Hard-Hearted Highlander
Devil in Tartan
Tempting the Laird
Seduced by a Scot
Julia London
A Royal Kiss & Tell
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM
THE EARL'S MARRIAGE BARGAIN
BY LOUISE ALLEN
CHAPTER ONE
Helenamar, Alucia
1846
It is an absolute truth that men and women alike desire the earnest vow of someone to love and cherish them all their days, and that nothing elicits joy in the breast of all mankind quite like a wedding.
Recently, the most joyous occasion was the wedding of the universally admired Lady Eliza Tricklebank and His Royal Highness Sebastian Charles Iver Chartier, the Crown Prince of Alucia.
The bride entered Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the Alucian capital city of Helenamar at half past twelve. She wore a gown of white silk and chiffon. It was fashioned in the Alucian style, cut close to the body and featuring a customary train thirty feet in length. The train was hand stitched in silver and gold thread with the symbols of Alucia and England, including the famous Alucian racehorses, the mountain buttercup and the Chartier coat of arms. England was duly represented in the Tudor rose, the lion and the English royal banner. The Alucian national motto,
Libertatem et Honorem
,
was embroidered in tiny scalloped letters around the hems of the sleeves.
The bride wore a veil anchored with a diamond tiara with a center stone weighing ten carats, lent to her by Her Majesty Queen Daria. Around her neck she wore a pearl necklace comprising twenty-three pearls, one for each of the provinces in Alucia, a gift from His Majesty King Karl. On her breast Lady Tricklebank wore a sapphire-and-gold brooch, a wedding gift from her fiancé, Prince Sebastian.
The prince was dressed in a black frock of superfine wool, worn to midcalf, a white waistcoat embroidered in miniature with the same symbols of Alucia and England as the bride’s train, and a silk cravat trimmed in silver and gold thread. He wore the crown bestowed on him at his investiture as crown prince.
After the ceremony, the newlyweds rode in open carriage to Constantine Palace through a throng of well-wishers that lined the avenue for three miles.
The king granted the prince and his new bride the titles of Duke and Duchess of Tannymeade. They will reside in the port city at Tannymeade Palace.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
THE PROMISE INHERENT in any wedding was delightful, but if it were a royal wedding, the paroxysms of joy might very well result in smiles permanently frozen to all the cheerful faces. It would turn the most jaded heart to gold. And if the beatific royal bride were one’s dearest friend, it would provoke cascading waves of unbridled happiness.
Lady Caroline Hawke was over the moon at the good fortune of her dearest friend, Eliza Tricklebank, who was, at that very moment, swearing her love and fealty to Prince Sebastian. Until a scant few months ago, Eliza had been determined to be a spinster and care for her blind father for the rest of his days. She spent her days in plain gowns and aprons, alternately reading to her father or engaging in her curious hobby of repairing clocks. But then Eliza was invited to a royal ball, and a man was murdered, and she was given some gossip that pointed to the identity of the killer, and the next thing Caroline knew, her Eliza was marrying a man who would one day be king of this country. Which meant Eliza would be queen.
It was so improbable, so impossible, that it went well beyond even the wildest fairy tale Caroline had ever heard or had the capacity to imagine.
Seated in the front row of the cathedral, a place of honor awarded to her as Eliza’s dearest friend, Caroline was a little misty about it. Eliza radiated happiness. Caroline had never considered herself the sentimental type, but here she was.
She shifted her gaze to Prince Leopold, standing beside his brother, Prince Sebastian. She wondered what he thought of the occasion and the happy couple. He was quite tall and had a robust and muscular figure. The broad shoulders of his coat tapered to a slim waist, then flared out again. He looked so regal and masculine that Caroline allowed herself a bit of a daydream—she imagined walking down this very aisle on his arm.
She refused to ruin this pleasant little dream by recalling his wretched reception of her at the royal banquet. At that august event, he’d looked at her as if she were a servant come to take away his soiled clothing. He’d done it again during a morning ride through Klevauten Park that had been arranged for the wedding guests. On that day, when she’d galloped up beside him and his friends, he’d frowned and said, “You must be lost, madam.” As if she were some ragamuffin who had slipped into a royal party!
Fortunately for him, Caroline had a forgiving nature and, in spite of her pique, could still imagine what it would be like if Prince Leopold were to smile at her the way Prince Sebastian smiled at Eliza. What joy it would be to walk down the aisle with him while wearing a gown as beautiful as Eliza’s, which, naturally, Caroline had helped the royal dressmakers to design. She had a keen eye for fashion.
Next to Eliza stood her sister, Mrs. Hollis Honeycutt, the matron of honor. Hollis had the help of eight little cherubs to oversee the elaborate train affixed to Eliza’s wedding dress. The cherubs were dressed identically to Eliza, without the train, of course, because only the most seasoned of ladies could maneuver in them. Instead, the girls wore flower crowns on their heads. There were no bridesmaids.
If it were Caroline’s wedding, she would have had a fleet of bridesmaids.
But in Alucia, Eliza explained, that was not the custom. “Flower girls,” she’d said. “They come from all over the country. It’s quite an honor to be named a flower girl, as I understand it.”
“But why can’t you have what you like?” Caroline complained, assuming, of course, that Eliza liked what she liked. Since the day of Eliza’s betrothal to Prince Sebastian, Caroline had also assumed, quite incorrectly, that she would be the principal bridesmaid. After all, she and Eliza and Hollis had been entwined in one another’s lives since they were very little girls.
“I am content with flower girls, honestly,” Eliza said. “I’d be content with a very simple affair. I was content with the civil ceremony. But Queen Daria prefers otherwise.”
“Naturally, she does. This is the wedding where you will be seen by all the people you will rule one day.”
Eliza snorted. “I will not rule, Caroline. I’ll be fortunate if I can find my husband in this massive place.” She’d gestured to the decorative walls around them. It was not an exaggeration—Constantine Palace appeared to be bigger than even Buckingham.
“Let me be the maid of honor,” Caroline had begged her. “I am much better equipped to see to your train than Hollis is.”
“I beg your pardon! I am her sister,” Hollis reminded Caroline.
“The train is thirty feet, Hollis. How will you ever manage? You’ve scarcely managed your own train since we’ve been in Alucia. And my gown should be seen. I spared no expense for it.”
Eliza and Hollis looked at Caroline.
“I mean, of course, after your gown is seen.”
The sisters continued to stare at her.
Caroline shrugged a very tiny bit. “Obviously,” she added.
“I rather thought that’s what you meant,” Eliza said charitably.
The three of them had gleefully adopted the Alucian style of dress since arriving a month ago in Helenamar. The English style of dress—full skirts, high necks and long sleeves—was hot and heavy. They’d admired the beautiful Alucian gowns that fit the curves of a woman’s body, with the long flowing sleeves, and, most of all, the elaborately embroidered trains...until they discovered that the unusually long trains were a bit of a bother to wear.
“I will manage,” Hollis had insisted. “No one has come to this wedding to see your gown, Caro.”
“Well, obviously, Hollis, they haven’t. But they will be delighted all the same, won’t they? And by the bye, there’s no law that says the attendant of honor must be one’s sister.”
“There is no law, but she is my sister and she will be the attendant of honor,” Eliza said. “And besides, if you were to stand with me, I’d fret the entire ceremony that you were too enthralled with Leo to even notice my train.” She’d arched a golden brow directly at Caroline.
As if Caroline had done something wrong.
She most certainly had not. “Leo? Is that what we’re calling him now?” she drawled. Leo was Prince Sebastian’s younger brother. His Royal Highness Prince Leopold.
Prince Leopold, as everyone knew, had spent the last several years in England, “attending” Cambridge, which meant, in reality, that he spent more time at soirees and gentlemen’s clubs and hunting lodges than studying. Caroline had encountered him last summer in Chichester at a country house party. They’d engaged in a charming little exchange that Caroline recalled perfectly, word for word. Prince Leopold, on the other hand, remembered it not at all. Worse, he didn’t seem to remember her.
The archbishop’s voice suddenly rose into a chant of some sort, drawing Caroline’s attention back to the ceremony. Oh dear, she was thinking about Prince Leopold again when she should be watching her best friend marry a prince. At that moment, Eliza slipped her hand into Prince Sebastian’s hand and held on tightly as the archbishop asked her to repeat after him in English. To love, to honor, to protect and defend.
So romantic.
Caroline glanced to her right. She was seated next to her brother, the baron Beckett Hawke. He was older than her by half a dozen years and had been her guardian since she was eight and he was fourteen. She leaned against him. “Isn’t she lovely?” she whispered.
“Ssh.”
“I think she is lovelier than even Queen Victoria on her wedding day,” Caroline whispered. “Her gown is beautiful. It was my idea to use the gold and silver thread on the train.”
Beck pretended not to have heard a word.
“Do you know, I think I could have made that train.”
Her brother put his hand on Caroline’s knee and squeezed as he turned his pale green eyes to hers. He frowned darkly.
Caroline pushed his hand away and glanced around her. It was massive, this Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Painted ceilings soared overhead with visions of angels and other godly images. All the fixtures were gold plated, particularly the pulpit, which looked more like a monument than a stand for the Bible. There was so much stained glass that the morning light fractured across Eliza’s long train, turning it into a moving rainbow as sunlight shimmered through the panes.
Every seat in the massive cathedral was taken, filled with beautiful people of varying skin tones and colorful costumes and glittering jewels. They had come far and wide, Caroline understood, from countries she’d never even heard of.
In a cove above the altar, a choir of young men and boys sang the hymns that had accompanied Eliza down the center aisle to meet her prince. It had sounded as if the heavens had parted and the angels were singing for this bride.
The ceremony, almost an hour of it now, was filled with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Caroline wasn’t entirely certain what was happening, as the ceremony was conducted in Latin and Alucian and, for the parts Eliza had to say, in English. It seemed to her that Eliza and Sebastian were up and down quite a lot, one minute on their knees with their heads bowed, and standing the next, staring starry-eyed at each other. There was a somber moment when Eliza was directed down onto her knees alone. It looked as if she were knighted or anointed in some way, and when it was done, the archbishop put his hand to her head, the king and queen stood, and then Prince Sebastian lifted her up and pinned a gorgeous sapphire-and-gold brooch to her breast.
“She’s a real princess now,” Caroline whispered to Beck.
Predictably, he ignored her.
Eliza looked like a princess, too, and Caroline wished Eliza’s father, Justice Tricklebank, could be here. Alas, his advanced age and blindness had made it impossible for him to attend. There had been a smaller, private ceremony in England—the first civil union—before Sebastian had returned to Alucia. That ceremony, which her father had attended, had been necessitated by the fact that Eliza and Sebastian could not seem to keep their hands from each other for as much as a few hours.
There was another civil union once Eliza had arrived in Alucia so there would be no question of impropriety, as the heat between Eliza and her prince had only grown. It was embarrassing, really.
But neither ceremony had been anything like this. This was a pageant, a feast for the eyes and hearts of romantics everywhere.
Caroline’s mind drifted, and she wondered if all these people would be at the ball tonight. She hoped so. She had a beautiful blue Alucian gown trimmed in gold that was astoundingly beautiful. She’d made the train herself. The ball would be her moment to shine...next to Eliza, of course.
Yesterday, Eliza had nervously counted out the heads of state that would attend the wedding and the ball and had turned a bit pale as the number mounted. Caroline’s pulse had leapt with delight.
“I can’t bear it!” Eliza had exclaimed, unnerved by the number of dignitaries, of the many kings and queens. “What if I say something wrong? You know how I am. Have you any idea how many gifts we’ve received? Am I to remember them all? I’ve never seen so many gold chalices and silver platters and fine porcelain in all my life! What if I trip? What if I spill something on my gown?”
“My advice, darling, is not to fill your plate to overflowing,” Hollis had said absently. She was bent over her paper, making notes for the periodical she published, the Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and Domesticity for Ladies. The twice-monthly gazette covered such topics as the latest fashions, domesticity and health advice, and—the most interesting part—the most tantalizing on-dits swirling about London’s high society.
Hollis could hardly keep up with the ravenous demand for society news now. She was planning to publish a gazette that would be twice the length of her normal offering with all the news of the royal wedding the moment she returned to London. She’d been busily dispatching letters to her manservant, Donovan, for safekeeping throughout the month they’d been in Alucia.
She was so preoccupied that her advice, while offered freely, was not offered with much thought, and Eliza took exception. “I beg your pardon! I’ve hardly eaten a thing since I’ve arrived in Alucia. At every meal the queen looks at me as if she disapproves of everything I do! I’m afraid to do anything, much less eat,” Eliza complained. “They’ll all be looking at me. They’ll be waiting for me to do something wrong, or speculating if I’m already carrying the heir. You cannot imagine how much interest there is in my ability to bear an heir.”
“Well, of course!” Caroline said cheerfully. “You’ll have to be a broodmare, darling, but after you’ve given them what they want, you may live in conjugal bliss for the rest of your days surrounded by wealth and privilege and many, many servants.”
“They won’t all be looking at you, Eliza. At least half the room will be looking at your handsome husband,” Hollis had said with a wink.
Caroline was once again jolted back into the present when the archbishop lifted a heavy jeweled chalice above the heads of Eliza and Prince Sebastian. Surely that meant they were nearly done? Prince Sebastian took Eliza’s hand, and they turned away from the archbishop, facing the guests with ridiculously happy grins on their faces. They were married!
Hollis turned, too, and even from where Caroline sat, she could see Hollis’s dark blue eyes shining with tears of joy. The guests rose to their feet as the prince and his bride began their procession away from the altar. Rose petals rained down on the couple and their guests from above. The little flower girls fluttered around behind Eliza like butterflies, flanking her train as they followed the couple down the aisle. Prince Leopold offered his arm to Hollis, and she beamed up at him. Caroline felt left out. Hollis and Eliza were near and dear to her heart, the closest thing to sisters she’d ever had, and she longed to be with them now.
Eliza and Prince Sebastian floated past Caroline and Beck without any acknowledgment of them. That was to be expected—the two of them looked absolutely besotted. They were so enthralled with each other, in fact, that Caroline fretted they’d walk into any one of the marble columns that lined their path.
Oh, but she was envious, filled to the very brim with envy. In England, she rarely gave marriage any thought except on those occasions Beck complained she ought to settle on someone, anyone, and relieve him of his duty. But he didn’t really mind his duty, his protestations notwithstanding. Caroline rather suspected he liked having her underfoot. So she flitted from one party to the next, happy to enjoy the attentions of the many gentlemen who crossed her path, happy with her freedom to do as she pleased.
But looking at Eliza, Caroline realized that she did indeed want one day to be in love with a man who would be as devoted to her as Prince Sebastian was to his bride. She wanted to feel everything Eliza was feeling, to understand just how that sort of love changed a person.
Prince Leopold and Hollis passed by Caroline and Beck. Hollis’s face was streaked with happy tears. Prince Leopold happened to look to the guests as they passed, a polite smile on his face. His gaze locked on Caroline’s—well, not locked, really, as much as it skimmed over her—but nevertheless, she smiled broadly. She began to lift a hand but was suddenly jostled with an elbow to her ribs. She jerked a wide-eyed gaze to her brother.
“Stop gawking,” he whispered. “You’ll snap your neck, craning it like that.”
Caroline haughtily touched a curl at her neck.
Beck turned his attention to the procession. The king and queen were passing them now. Beck leaned toward her and whispered, “He’s a prince, Caro, and you are just an English girl. You’re indulging in fairy tales again. I can see it plainly on your face.”
Just an English girl? She very much would have liked to kick Beck like she used to do when she was just a wee English girl. “Better to dream in fairy tales than not dream at all.”
Beck rolled his eyes. He stood dispassionately as the archbishop and his altar boys followed the king and queen.
Just an English girl, indeed.
CHAPTER TWO
The newly married Duchess of Tannymeade is greatly admired by the citizens of Alucia, and indeed the world. Following the wedding ceremony, the couple was feted in a private ceremony by the duke’s family and specially invited guests, during which time the duchess was presented with wedding gifts, including a ruby necklace from Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, a gold-plated and porcelain casket from Sultan Abdülmecid and the people of Turkey, and a pair of dancing horses from Prince Florestan I of Monaco. Our own Queen Victoria and Prince Albert have gifted the duke and duchess Crawley Hall, a country residence in Sussex, the keys to which were presented to the couple by the Right Honorable Lord Russell, who traveled to Helenamar in the queen’s stead.
The Duke and Duchess of Tannymeade were not the only ones to receive attention at the ceremony. Some observers noted a very close kin of the duke invested his considerable attentions on a Weslorian heiress rather than the newlyweds.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
THIS WEDDING WAS quite possibly the longest ceremony in the history of all mankind. Even a Greek bacchanal could not have lasted as long as this. The neckcloth around Prince Leopold’s neck felt too tight. The medals he wore as part of his formal attire seemed to be pulling oddly at the fabric, causing him to move his shoulder every so often to right his coat. What time had his guard, Kadro, rolled him into bed this morning? Four? It was all but a hazy memory now. It was not Leo’s fault, really. It had been a dare of some sort, to drink la fée verte, or the green fairy, as the Swedish ambassador had called it.
At the end of the newlyweds’ procession from the cathedral, they stepped into a small vestibule to sign the parish marriage registry. Leo, Mrs. Honeycutt and the archbishop followed them to witness. Leo watched his brother sign Sebastian Chartier with the familiar thick and sure stroke of his pen. He realized he was tapping his finger against his pant leg with impatience as Eliza took the pen and signed next. Her hand was shaking, and she managed to leave a smear of ink under the broad, flourishing strokes that formed Eliza Tricklebank Chartier. As soon as she put down the pen, she and Mrs. Honeycutt clung to each other and laughed as if they were mad, Mrs. Honeycutt’s dark head pressed to Eliza’s fair one.
Sebastian and Leopold exchanged a look. Or rather, Leo looked at Bas, and then at the clock just over his brother’s shoulder. He didn’t want to be impolite, but his head was pounding and his mouth dry. For a fortnight, there had been ceremony after celebration after official event after reception. He’d attended them all, dutifully fulfilling his obligations as prince and best man and whatever else they wanted him to be, all the while drinking to numb his tedium. He chafed to be done with this, to be with friends.
Leo preferred a life far from Alucia, in England, with friends. Not this princely one where he was no use to anyone, a prop at one ceremony after another.
“You are to witness, Mrs. Honeycutt,” Leo said, to hurry things along, and he picked up the gold pen and handed it to her in case she was unclear what witnessing meant.
“Yes, of course,” she said nervously, and let go her sister. Beneath Eliza’s smear, she deftly wrote her name.
Leo affixed his, as well—dashing it off in his haste to carry on—then stood with his hands clasped at his back as the archbishop offered one last blessing. How many blessings did one couple need?
But at last, they exited the cathedral, and Bas and Eliza stepped into an open carriage. On this beautiful sunlit day, the happy couple would be escorted by palace guards down the long avenue en route to the palace so that the throngs of people waiting for a glimpse of their new crown princess would have opportunity to wave. Eliza had become quite popular since arriving in Alucia. The people saw her as one of their own, a commoner who had charmed the crown prince through no particular effort, other than being just as she was. Leo understood their fascination—it was a tale of hope and fantasy. He understood that most people worked quite hard to provide the necessities of life, and that life in a palace was merely a dream. She was one who had broken through the thick walls of royalty and privilege, and they loved her for it.
It held no fascination for him, however. He did not like the gilded cage that surrounded him in Helenamar. He resented the many rules that governed his behavior, like to whom he spoke, where he sat and so forth. In England, people knew he was a prince, of course, but most of the common people did not, and moreover, no one expected him to be anything. Which suited him, as he wasn’t anything. He was nothing but a man with a fat purse and a pair of guards to protect him. In England, he moved about as he pleased, hunted when he liked, caroused with his many friends as the mood struck him, rode his horse, wooed women, sat wherever the hell he liked. All without bother.
Or rather, he had enjoyed his life without bother until his brother had come to London to negotiate a trade agreement, and his private secretary had been murdered, and then suddenly, everyone in England knew a pair of unmarried princes moved among them. His life had changed somewhat since then. More people in England were aware of him now. He sincerely hoped that when he returned to England, the excitement of an Englishwoman marrying an Alucian prince would have died down, and he could resume his dissolute life.
Unfortunately, there were miles to go before he could board that ship and sail away. But today, after the private reception for family and what he supposed would be hundreds of their closest friends, Leo was to meet friends from his youth for a little respite before the final royal ball this evening. More drinking would be a hard go after last night’s debauchery, but if Leo was accomplished at anything, it was revelry.
Leo and Mrs. Honeycutt joined his parents in the gold carriage and followed behind the newly married couple. Mrs. Honeycutt seemed genuinely intimidated by it all—she sat stiffly, her hands clasped so tightly together that he worried she might break a finger. He wished he could assure her that she needn’t have worried—his parents ignored her for the most part and, aside from a few pleasantries exchanged about the wedding, turned their attention to the crowds. Leo knew how his parents viewed Mrs. Honeycutt. She was a foreigner, a commoner. She would return to England soon. There was nothing to be gained by knowing her.
But Leo felt sorry for her and her nerves and smiled at her. He could imagine this day had been as overwhelming for her as it had been for her sister. Frankly, there were times the massive crowds still overwhelmed him. What it must be like to be a man simply standing in the crowd, watching a royal carriage roll by. What it must be like to go to the pub afterward and drink to the prince’s marriage, then home to his wife and his children and his bed.
He’d warned Bas that Eliza might experience difficulties in adjusting to this life. “Take care of your bride,” he’d said yesterday in a rare moment they’d found themselves alone. “This is a new world for her.”
“I will,” Bas had said, and though he’d said it casually, there was fierceness in his eyes that suggested he loved Eliza more than anything else in this world.
Thank goodness for it, because she would need his protection. The Alucian nobility looked down on her. The English nobility who had come for the wedding seemed appalled by her. Eliza herself was at turns both unnerved and then charmingly joyous. Her sister seemed ill at ease more often than not.
The only person on the side of Eliza who appeared completely unaffected by the trappings of royalty was Lord Hawke’s sister. That woman would take no notice of her nerves even if they rose up and wrapped themselves around her throat. Oh, quite the contrary—she seemed emboldened by unfamiliar and formal situations. She sailed through them with a wide, warm smile and rosy cheeks and spectacularly blond hair. She did not go unnoticed—she was exceedingly attractive and taller than average. It was impossible not to see her. She was that rare social butterfly who thought nothing of chatting with anyone and everyone in her path. She delighted in being heard, and all were fair game to her—be one a duke or a butler, a queen or a chambermaid. She particularly seemed to enjoy butting into any conversation to offer an opinion, and she didn’t care who was on hand to hear it.
The attention she received seemed to invigorate her and compel her to step out of her bounds. She’d certainly thought nothing of approaching him at the royal banquet two nights ago as if it were a trifling thing. Either she didn’t understand that one did not approach a royal prince without proper introduction at a formal event or she didn’t care—all he knew was that he was in the midst of a conversation, feeling pleasantly inebriated, when he suddenly realized she was at his side, smiling as if there were only the few of them in this room. “Good evening!” she’d said brightly, her green eyes shining. “Is this not a glorious event? I am so very impressed with the reception Eliza has received in Helenamar, aren’t you?”
“She is well liked,” Leo confirmed blandly. He was not surprised by the lady’s approach, but his companions, all of them hailing from the highest reaches of Alucian society, had stared at her as if she were a curiosity from a circus, and her breach of proper royal etiquette was to be examined and discussed. In particular, Lady Brunella Fortengau’s eyes had gone wide with shock, and she’d looked at Leo as if she thought they were being invaded by a plague and he ought to do something about it.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it, that much Leo had deduced long before this evening. As Lady Brunella had looked on disapprovingly, Hawke’s sister had taken a glass of champagne from a servant’s tray and said to the poor man, “Oh dear, should I?” as if she expected him to answer. “I had a glass of champagne at the bridal luncheon, and much to my dismay it had gone off. Have you tasted this?” she’d asked, putting the glass up to her nose.
The servant flushed. “No, madam.”
She’d sipped, narrowed her eyes and stared upward as she assessed the champagne, then smiled brightly at the servant and declared it divine. Then she’d offered to hand Lady Brunella a glass, encouraging her to sample a most excellent vintage.
Judging by the dip of Lady Brunella’s eyebrows, she did not care to be told by this lively Englishwoman that she “simply must try” the champagne, and Leo had made the decision to hasten the woman along when she asked if he would like to taste the champagne.
“Thank you, but I shall wait until the king and queen arrive.”
She’d laughed. “Then you might be in for a long wait, no? They were quite tardy last night, weren’t they?”
“I beg your pardon?” With a nod of his head, he sent the servant scurrying along.
“I’m making a jest,” she’d said. “Except that they were rather behind schedule.” And to the stunned looks of his friends, for who would dare remark on the king and queen’s tardiness, she’d explained, “We’re acquainted,” and had gestured to herself and Leo.
“Not exactly,” Leo had said.
“In England,” she’d clarified with a pert smile.
“Perhaps in passing,” he’d offered politely, still miffed that she insisted on making the ridiculous assertion about a meeting at a house party in Chichester. How could he possibly remember anyone he’d met at that house? Given all that he’d drunk, it was remarkable he recalled Chichester at all. With a small and subtle lift of his finger, he’d summoned the head butler, who smoothly interceded.
“Madam? If I may,” the butler had said, and gestured vaguely in the direction of her seat.
At first, when the wedding celebrations had begun, Leo thought Hawke’s sister merely naive, something like a country bumpkin come to a grand wedding. But the more he saw her over the course of the wedding celebrations, the more he determined that she was a mix of intrepid spirit with a sprinkle of insolence, a dash of presumption and a dollop of cheeriness for whomever she met, whether it was warranted or not, all delivered with a pretty smile and a bit of laughter in her green eyes.
She was exactly the sort of person royal courtiers did not care to find in their midst. Courtiers were typically annoyed with anyone who took attention that they desperately sought for themselves. And when one was foreign and beautiful and annoying, beautifully annoying, they tended to revile that person on general principle.
At last, the cortege of wedding carriages arrived at the royal palace to more trumpets and crowds, disgorging all the people dressed in cumbersome military regalia and medals. The royal family and their dozens of friends were ushered into a private reception room, where Bas and Eliza would welcome foreign dignitaries.
When presented to the king and queen in the salon, Eliza dipped into a much-improved curtsy beneath a glittering crystal chandelier. When she’d first come to Alucia, she had a tendency to lean to one side to such a degree that Leo feared she was in danger of toppling over if she dipped any lower.
Bas was beaming. Leo had never seen his stoic brother as happy as he was in this moment. He was always so reserved, and so proper. Courtiers used to remark that it was the difference in training for the brother who would be king and the one who would not. While Bas had been off learning how to comport himself, Leo had been learning how to enjoy himself.
Bas grabbed Leo’s elbow and squeezed it hard, grinning. “I’m a married man now, Leo.”
“Je, Bas, I stood beside you as it happened.”
Bas laughed as if Leo had said something hilarious. The expression on his face reminded Leo of an occasion many years ago when they were boys, living under the watchful eyes of governesses and tutors, but rarely their parents. They’d stumbled upon a litter of wiggling, floppy-eared black-and-brown puppies in a sack that someone had clearly meant to dispose of. When they’d released the puppies, they were besieged by a tangle of big paws and fiercely wagging tails. Sebastian had been delighted with the find, and to this day, Leo could recall Bas’s utter joy as he’d lain on his back and let the puppies wiggle and squirm around him, fighting one another to lick his face.
The puppies were returned to the palace with them and homes found for them at Bas’s insistence. One of the puppies became a constant companion to Bas until the dog’s death fourteen years later. Bas was as devoted to Eliza as he had been to Pontu.
“Look at her,” Bas said, nodding to a point behind Leo. Leo turned around, his gaze landing on a small group of women that included his new sister-in-law, Mrs. Honeycutt; an Alucian heiress he’d met once or twice; and, of course, Hawke’s sister. That one waved at him, as if they’d been separated at a country fair.
“She’s beautiful,” Bas said. “I can’t believe I found her. Much less married her.”
Neither could Leo, frankly. Eliza Tricklebank and her coterie were as far removed from the sort of woman he and Bas had been raised to expect to marry as she could possibly be. Leo would never forget the first time he’d met her. In a modest townhome with yapping dogs, an insolent cat and the many, many clocks.
“I always thought it would be someone from Alucia,” Bas mused. He suddenly grinned. “I suppose the Alucian bride will be yours.”
“Don’t even say it,” Leo muttered, looking around them. “I’m quite content with my bachelor lifestyle, thank you. In fact, I can scarcely wait to return to it.”
“I won’t say it, but you may trust our father will soon enough. When are you setting sail?”
“Two days’ time.”
Bas was still smiling when he did something completely uncharacteristic and put his arm around Leo’s shoulder and squeezed him into an affectionate hug. “Not a moment too soon, I’d wager. Good luck to you, Leo. We are to Tannymeade, where I intend to honeymoon like a beast in the wild for several days.” And then, remarkably, his very proper brother laughed and elbowed him in the side.
That was not unlike something Leo might have said himself, and before Eliza, Bas would have chastised him for it. “Is this what marriage does to a man? Turn him so bloody randy?” Leo asked.
Bas laughed loudly, and people turned to look, their expressions as surprised as Leo felt.
No one was happier for Bas than Leo, but he’d be much happier when the ceremonies finally ended and Bas and Eliza turned their attention to the important task of creating heirs. He’d be wild with joy when he could divest himself of this bothersome neckcloth and the bloody weight of these medals, and perhaps take a headache powder. But until that last congratulatory remark had been made, the last gift received, the last cake cut and the last dance danced, he had to endure the attentions of parents and unmarried women, all of them eager to make an advantageous match. All of them eager to do for their daughters what Eliza Tricklebank had done all on her own.
Speaking of Eliza, she had made her way through the throng of guests with her companions in tow. “You must try the champagne!” she said, holding a flute aloft to Bas. “It’s very fine.”
“Ah, the gift from the French ambassador,” Bas said.
“That kind man? He also sent the wine, didn’t he? We must make friends with him right away,” Eliza declared, and looked around them, as if seeking the gentleman.
This did not appear to be Eliza’s first glass of fine champagne of the day.
“Here we all are, like a band of merry troubadours!” Hawke’s sister announced and looped her arm around Eliza’s shoulders. Her eyes were on Leo, twinkling with what he suspected was at least as much champagne as Eliza had enjoyed. “Well, Your Highness?” she asked Leo. “What did you think? The ceremony was perfection, wasn’t it?”
“It was, je,” he confirmed. He wondered how long he would be forced to make proper small talk before he could make his escape.
“I’m so glad you thought so! I fretted for you—you looked rather glum standing there beside your brother.”
He had to think a moment about what she’d said. He’d looked glum? “Pardon?”
“Caro!” Eliza said with a bit of a laugh. “What a thing to say!”
“It’s true!”
“I am certain His Highness’s nerves were on edge, like mine,” Mrs. Honeycutt said. “It’s terrifying to stand before all those people.”
This amused Bas, and he looked at his brother. “Were you terrified, Leo?” he asked with a wink.
Leo had not been terrified. He’d been trying to remain upright, frankly. “I was observing the solemnity of the occasion.”
“The solemnity!” Hawke’s sister laughed as if he’d meant that to be amusing. “But it is a joyous occasion! It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen our dearest Eliza. So happy that it made me long for the same.”
“The same what?” Eliza asked.
“The same as you, darling! A stroll down the aisle in a stunning gown, like you, on the arm of a handsome gentleman. Like you.” She winked.
No one said anything. Leo was astonished. Who spoke like that, laying her feelings so bare to all and everyone?
Hawke’s sister looked around at them all, noting their surprise. “What? Am I not to imagine it?” She laughed. Before anyone could think of a suitable response, she said, “Were the flower girls not adorable?” She looked directly at Leo, as if she expected him to answer.
What was the matter with this woman? Why was she speaking to him of these things? But now they all turned to look at Leo, as if they wished to know his opinion of the young girls that he’d scarcely even noticed. Bas smiled devilishly, enjoying this attention to Leo.
“I, ah...je. From what I recall,” he muttered, and looked away from Hawke’s sister.
But she was undaunted and continued to natter on, as he was learning she was wont to do. “I had said to Eliza that she ought to have bridesmaids, but she said it is the custom here for flower girls, and I wondered how that would appear in a venue so grand as the cathedral, but I must admit I—”
“I beg your pardon,” said a deep male voice.
Leo hadn’t seen his father join the group until he stepped up behind Hawke’s sister. She at least had the sense to stop talking when the king made an appearance. She moved aside and curtsied. “Your Majesty,” she said solemnly.
“I have no wish to interrupt your celebration, but I should like a word with my son, if I may?”
“Of course,” Bas said.
“Not you, Sebastian—enjoy the reception. My other son,” his father said, and smiled at Leo.
Leo was instantly suspicious. He glanced curiously at his smiling father, thinking he should have made his escape sooner. His father rarely needed to speak to him alone, saving his weighty conversations for Bas.
“Well, Leopold?”
“Je,” he said, and with a nod to the others, he joined his father and moved away from the group.
The king’s eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile as they strolled away, generally an indication that he was in a very good mood. As if to confirm it, he said, “The day has been excellent in every way. Your mother and I could not be happier that our Bas is, at long last, married.” He smiled again but turned his head and looked at Leo.
The slightly calculated curve of that smile caused a small knot to form in Leo’s stomach. He was usually quite adept at avoiding the conversation he knew was about to burst forth from his father’s mouth, but with all the wedding celebrations and drink and that beautifully annoying woman talking about flower girls, of all things, his reflexes seemed to be compromised.
His father stopped near one of the large windows. On the grounds, enormous crowds were still milling about, hoping for another sight of the newlyweds.
“Now the crown prince has married,” his father said, shifting closer to Leo, still smiling, “your mother and I might turn our attention to you.”
“What? Me?” Leo felt exposed, as if he’d gone off to war without any armor or even a sword. “I’m...I’m to England in two days,” he quickly reminded his father.
His father’s smile did not waver. He gestured to a passing footman, took two flutes of champagne from his tray and handed one to Leo. Leo didn’t realize he’d even taken the glass until he saw it in his hand. He was flat-footed, taken aback that his father would use the opportunity of Bas’s private wedding reception, with the ink not yet dry on the marriage registry, to beat this drum for him.
“Hear me out, Leopold,” his father said congenially, and drew him even farther aside. “I want this to be as easy and painless as possible for you. There have already been discussions.”
Both of those things sounded alarm bells in his brain. Big brass bells, clanging loudly. His marriage would be easy and painless? The king made it sound as if Leo were a dog to be put down—Leo saw nothing easy or painless about shackling himself for the rest of his life to a woman he hardly knew. There had already been discussions? With whom? Certainly not him. “I would like to—”
“We have made some progress with Wesloria, have we not?” his father quickly continued before Leo could beg off from the discussion.
The knot in his belly tightened. Had they made progress, really? It hadn’t even been a year since some Weslorians and traitorous Alucians had plotted to kidnap Bas. The two nations had a history of war and distrust, but his father was referring to recent attempts to ease the ongoing tensions between the neighboring kingdoms.
At the crux of the dispute were two royal half brothers. When Leo’s father, Karl, had taken the throne some forty years ago, Uncle Felix had been banished from Alucia...mainly because he believed he had a more legitimate claim to the throne than Karl did.
The question of the rightful succession had its roots in a sixteenth-century civil war, when a Chartier had first assumed the throne. Felix’s ancestors, the Oberons, had lost that war and retreated to Wesloria, propping up Weslorian kings and nobles along the way. They’d long held that the Chartier claim to rule Alucia was not as legitimate as theirs, and military skirmishes along the border had been plaguing the countries for years.
Felix and Karl were the result of Leo’s grandfather attempting to bring unity to the two countries after his first wife died. His second wife, a distant cousin and an Oberon, had been a bit of a schemer. She’d thought to insert herself into the mix for the throne with the birth of her son. That had not worked out for any of them, quite obviously.
Uncle Felix made a lot of noise in Wesloria. It was well known that he kept the Weslorian king under his thumb. Felix had promised to unite Wesloria and Alucia under one rule if he was successful in gaining the Alucian throne, and with the many loyalists dedicated to the Oberon cause, the threat of war hung over the heads of the two nations. The Chartiers sought to suppress anyone who was rumored to be sympathetic to Wesloria, which had caused a lot of strife and stymied economic growth in both nations. There were myriad rumors every week of this noble or that wealthy merchant plotting to overthrow King Karl.
Sebastian had wanted to unite Wesloria and Alucia, too. But his idea had been to strike a trade agreement with England. He’d wanted the Chartiers and Oberons and their fellow countrymen to unite in the strength of industrialization and shared prosperity—not by the ravages of war.
Unfortunately, not everyone shared his desire for peace. A plot had unfolded while Sebastian was in England that had involved treachery at the highest reaches of Alucian government and had resulted in the murder of Sebastian’s personal secretary. But in the way tragedy had of revealing a silver lining, his brother had met and fallen in love with Eliza.
Today was the happiest of occasions, but the threat of war and attempts at a coup still surrounded the royal family outside the ivy-covered walls of the palace. No one had forgotten it. Least of all, the king.
“We can make greater progress with Alucia if we align ourselves with the right Weslorians,” his father said, glancing over his shoulder.
“The right Weslorians?”
“Those who have no desire to unify,” his father said, glancing around. “There are many advantages to keeping our borders and our sovereignty.”
Leo didn’t know what those advantages were and really didn’t care to learn them. He liked not knowing the advantages of sovereignty. It all seemed unduly complicated.
“A highly placed minister in the Weslorian cabinet is very keen to foster better trade and economic arrangements with Wesloria. He is the minister of labor, and there is every reason to believe he will be the next Weslorian prime minister.” His father waggled his brows. “A marriage with his daughter would serve us well, indeed.”
Us. His father said the word without hesitation or hint of irony, as if his parents and even Bas and Eliza would walk down the aisle with him. “I understand,” Leo said as he tried to quickly think of a way out of this corner. “But I’m not—”
“You will make her acquaintance tonight, at the ball. You’ll want to be certain to do it publicly, where everyone will see. Dance with her.”
Leo could feel what little blood was left in him after last night’s festivities draining from his limbs. So it really had been all arranged.
It was, in some ways, quite galling to him. When Leo was a young man, he’d wanted this sort of responsibility. He’d wanted to be a prince with a cause and had begged to be useful. But his father had given all real responsibility to Bas. Leo still recalled being denied the opportunity to join the cavalry because Bas was to join. He was still bitter about begging his father for something with purpose and being proclaimed the royal patron of the town criers. The bloody town criers.
There had been other things, and somewhere along the way, Leo had ceased to care about purpose. Purpose, he’d learned, was for Bas.
“Do you not want to know who she is, then?” his father asked jovially.
The king was proud of himself for this arrangement, and it clearly didn’t matter how Leo felt about it. He shrugged.
“Lady Eulalie Gaspar.”
Leo didn’t know any Gaspars, much less any Eulalies.
His father smiled coolly at Leo’s lack of enthusiasm and put his hand on his shoulder. He squeezed as if Leo was being a precocious child. “It’s already been arranged, Leopold. We mean to make the formal announcement when you’ve returned from England with your things well before the summer ends. You will court her properly for a few weeks and a formal announcement will be made by end of summer. But for all intents and purposes, you may consider yourself affianced.”
“I’m to consider myself affianced before I’ve even met her? Before I’ve even kissed her?” Leo asked coldly.
His father sighed and dropped his hand. “You know very well how these arrangements are made. Your mother and I ask very little of you, and this is something I need you to do.”
That they asked very little of him was at the heart of his discontent. “It’s not as if you are asking me to walk your dog,” Leo said.
“Son,” his father said sternly. “You always knew this day would come. You needn’t look as if I’ve commanded your head to be lopped off. It’s just a woman, for God’s sake.”
Just a woman. Not a wife, not a companion. Just a woman.
“Now go and speak kindly to the ambassador from Wesloria.” He nodded in the direction of the ambassador. “Ask after his horse—he claims to have a gelding who has clocked a faster speed than any horse known in this part of the world.” His father winked in a manner that was completely uncharacteristic and walked on, sipping his champagne before being swallowed up by people seeking his attention.
Leo stood in the same spot where his father had left him, stung and inwardly outraged. His father was right—he had known this day would come. But he’d thought there would at least be some discussion, that his desires would be taken into consideration.
He needed a drink and looked around for a footman. Not wine, thank you. Something heartier. Gin. Whisky.
He turned to see where the Weslorian ambassador was standing and spotted him in lively conversation with Hawke’s sister. Or rather, she was holding audience, her slender hands animating whatever tale she was imparting to the circle of gentlemen around her. Always attracting a crowd, that one. She suddenly tossed back her head and laughed loudly.
The ambassador seemed taken aback by it.
That woman. Gregarious and loud. She laughed carelessly; she told tales that apparently required the expansive use of her hands. She touched an arm here, a back there. She was in a royal palace at a royal reception, having the time of her life with not a single care for how she appeared. Meanwhile, he was an impotent prince, where the rules of society and royal protocol dictated what he said, what he ate, who he bloody well would marry. He was the one commanded to make small talk about a bloody horse with someone he hardly knew and didn’t want to know, while she breezily chattered on about God knew what.
Leo must have been standing and staring for too long—he slowly became aware of people looking in his direction. People who looked as if they might want a word. A “word” generally led to unusual requests and introductions he did not want to make.
No. Leo wanted to escape this palace and everything that went with it. But since he couldn’t do that, he determined he would escape to meet his friends as planned.
In a poor attempt at self-encouragement, he told himself that all he needed was time. Just a little bit of time to figure out how to postpone his fate a little longer.
CHAPTER THREE
Celebrations of the royal nuptials were held all over the city of Helenamar, including at the Foxhound Public House, a unique gathering place in the center of Old Helenamar, where it was rumored Prince Leopold made an appearance. Monsieur Bernard, a notorious Frenchman who is believed by some Alucians to be plotting with the Weslorians, was also spotted at the Foxhound in the company of Prince Leopold.
White satin boots are on the feet of every discerning Alucian woman in the evenings. They are often decorated with beads and ribbons to complement the gown, and the heels so high that the casual observer fears the lady may topple right off.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
SHORTLY AFTER ELIZA and Bas made their escape from the afternoon’s private reception—no doubt to find a room, as their esteem for each other had now become notorious in every corner of the palace, if not the entire city—Leo managed to take his leave, too.
He’d been looking forward to this reunion with old friends since arriving in Helenamar. It was unavoidable that so much ceremony would attend any event that included the royal family, and it was unavoidable that he would chafe at it. But he was fortunate in that he had a pair of palace guards who had been with him for many years and were accustomed to arranging these outings for him.
The Foxhound was situated between a pair of stately gated homes, and across from a public stable. It enjoyed a rare and curious mix of clientele—this was the one place in all of Helenamar where aristocrats mingled with ordinary residents of the city. It was the one place Leopold could go without being beset by men or women who wanted something from him. It was the one place he could hear the news of the country that hadn’t been filtered for him or painted in a most pleasing light by palace personnel. The truth won out at the Foxhound.
His friends were all on hand today, and already three tankards into the afternoon. When he entered, a rousing cry of delight went up.
“What of the evening’s festivities?” Leo laughingly asked, gesturing to the empty tankards scattered among them.
“There’s plenty of time to sober up and make ourselves presentable,” Francois said, and threw a collegiate arm around Leo’s shoulders as he bellowed for the barmaid to bring more ale.
Francois was a Frenchman who had immigrated to Alucia at a very young age and had attended the same hallowed halls of education as had Leo and Bas. With the fringe of dark ginger hair that hung over one eye, he was charming and always jovial. He was a raconteur as well, and today he’d brought an entertaining tale of an encounter with a dance-hall girl.
Leo and his friends drank more ale, toasted his brother and his bride, reminisced about their school days and laughed uproariously at bawdy jokes. At some point in the afternoon, Leo found a barmaid seated on his lap. He didn’t recall the specifics, but there she was, casually stroking his hair behind his ear.
It would seem, he thought hazily, that he’d had too much to drink. Again.
Apparently, Harvel, another school chum, thought the same. “Look here, Your Highness, you ought to carry on, hadn’t you? Are you not required to attend the ball?”
“I am indeed,” Leo said, and put his tankard of ale down with a thud. “As brother of the new duke, as son of the king, as...” He tried to think.
“As squiffed as a bloody prince!” shouted Voltan.
“As squiffed as a bloody prince!” Leo heartily echoed, and lifted his tankard, sloshing a good deal of ale onto the table. He was indeed inebriated. So much so that it took him two attempts to push the girl from his lap and find his feet. He stood up, patting down his coat and trousers in search of coins, and finding none. Ah, of course. In Alucia, he had no need of money.
He was feeling a little dizzy and regretting that he’d drunk so much, but his friends were quite amused by his attempts to find a purse and waved him off. “Think nothing of it, Chartier,” Francois said. “We’ll pay for your ale. Consider it our last gift to a free man.”
“What’s that you say?” Leo asked, and surged forward, planting his hands on the table. “Do you know something I ought to know?”
“Only what all of Helenamar knows, lad,” Francois said. He winked, and all of them laughed. “Go on, then, enjoy an evening of royal repast as is your due, and your loyal subjects will pay for your ale.”
“I am in your debt,” he said, and with a flourish of his hand, he bowed grandly. “Where are my guards? I am all but certain I came with guards.”
“Here, Your Highness,” said Kadro, and put his hand to Leo’s arm to turn him about. His other guard, Artur, stood stoically by.
Leo smiled. No, he laughed. “There you are!” he said gaily. Jmil, he was drunk. If he didn’t dry out quickly, he’d have hell to pay tonight. His father’s displeasure was something that could be felt to the depth of one’s marrow.
Leo blathered his farewells to his old friends, and God help him if he didn’t get a wee bit teary. He invited them all to call on him in England, and they all very earnestly agreed to come.
Leo emerged onto the quiet street between Kadro and Artur, blinking back the late afternoon sun, but managing to walk a fairly straight line to the curb. “Look at me, lads,” he said, laughing. “The king will have my bloody head, will he not?” He wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t notice neither guard disagreed with him.
He looked up and down the street. He’d expected the coach to be waiting—in Helenamar, Leo was accustomed to walking out a door and straight into a waiting conveyance. With all the unrest on the border with Wesloria, maximum caution was taken every time one of the royal family stepped beyond the palace walls. “The coach,” he said, as if his guards hadn’t noticed it missing. “Where is it?”
There was a discussion between the two guards—something about the driver being instructed to wait at a distance so as not to alert anyone to the presence of the prince in the pub—and then Kadro said, “I’ll have a look around the corner, Your Highness, if I have your leave?”
“Have a look wherever you like,” Leo said, and watched rather stupidly as Kadro disappeared around the corner. Behind him, something made a strange noise, like the staccato of gunfire. Artur jerked in that direction. “If you please, Your Highness, wait here,” he said, and went striding in the direction of the sound.
Even in his state of inebriation, Leo thought this was all highly unusual, to be left standing on the street without anyone about. He slumped against the side of the building, smiling to himself. He’d had a good day, all in all. Well, save the wretched headache he’d begun the day with. And his father’s pronouncement to him. Leo had managed to forget that unpleasantry over the space of a few hours, but now it came tripping back to him, disturbing the buzzy tranquility he’d developed in the company of his friends.
He was thinking of all he wished he’d said to his father instead of bumbling through it and didn’t notice the two men darting across the street in his direction until they were upon him. When he realized they were not passing by, it was woefully too late, as they were pulling him into an alley next to the public house. When he understood what was happening, he tried to shout for his guard, but his voice was garbled with his confusion and his inability to make his feet work properly beneath him.
The next thing he knew, he was caught in an alley with two men he’d never seen before. A sick punch of dread hit his belly, threatening to purge all the ale he’d so recklessly drunk.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in Alucian.
“Please be calm, Your Highness,” one of them said as they dragged him toward the dead end of the alley, then attempted to prop him up against the wall.
“Calm?” He flailed, waving them away. “Who are you? I have a right to know who or what is about to befall me.” A flurry of watery thoughts and emotions suddenly swirled in him—fear, regret, impatience—and all led to the same conclusion rather quickly: the inevitability of this very thing.
“I’ll keep watch,” one of the men said to the other in Alucian. He turned and took a few steps toward the alley entrance.
The other man took a tentative step toward Leo.
“See here now, I know death is inevitable,” Leo said.
“We do not—”
“And if this is the way I am to die, I will meet it with courage and grace,” Leo continued, spreading his arms wide. For a moment—he couldn’t hold his balance. “But make no mistake, sir. I will meet my end with a fight. Although I seem to be outnumbered, and I see nothing in this alley that will do for a weapon.” He squinted at what appeared to be a cat atop some stacked crates, entirely unperturbed by his imminent demise. “Is that a cat?”
The man turned to look.
“I would kick my own arse for being so blasted drunk if I could,” Leo said, remembering his predicament and glancing around for something to swing at the man’s head. “And if I survive this hijacking, I shall never taste a spirit again.” He paused. “Well. After tonight, I won’t. I will be required to drink a toast to my brother, of course.”
“Your Highness,” the man said in Alucian, and stepped closer to Leo, his arm outstretched, his palm facing Leo. That’s when Leo noticed the green armband. It was a Weslorian custom—a band or patch of dark green fitted around the sleeve or pinned to a breast, a lapel, a cuff, to indicate the person was Weslorian.
“You’re Weslorian,” he said. “I should have known. You mean to murder me, just as you murdered poor Matous. You ought to be ashamed, choosing the occasion of my brother’s wedding to murder me. You might have at least waited until the happy occasion had come to a close. Although, I grant you, it seems as if the happy occasion will never end—”
“Your Highness, please! We mean no harm,” the man said, lifting his hands in a placating manner.
“Ho,” Leo blustered incredulously. “I may be pissed, but I’m no fool!”
“I beg of you, Your Highness, we haven’t much time,” the man said, and stepped even closer. He really was quite small, Leo realized. If he hadn’t looked him in the face, he would have thought him a lad. His diminutive size merely added insult to this egregious injury—he would be killed or kidnapped by a man half his size.
“We’ve a message from Lysander.”
It was one long ale-soaked moment before Leo was able to grasp what the man had said. Lysander. Leo blinked. He rummaged around his thoughts trying to piece things together. Lysander was a man who spent his life righting terrible wrongs. He was a Samaritan, a man who had dedicated his existence to the helping of others. Leo knew a little about him after he famously rallied the people of Helenamar to close the workhouses. Leo had been abroad at the time, but apparently Lysander had caused quite a stir.
“What message?” Leo asked blearily.
“He asks for your help,” the elfin man said.
“What? Mine?” Leo asked, pointing to himself. “Why me? For what?”
“He would explain that himself in person. He asks, respectfully, if you would be so kind as to meet him tomorrow afternoon.” He smiled.
Why was he smiling? It was annoying, given the circumstances. Leo couldn’t think properly, but there was no reason the famed Lysander would want anything to do with him. “If he wants my help, why does he not come to me? Why not join us and the cat here in the alley?”
“It was impossible, Your Highness. You and your family have been surrounded by an army during the wedding celebrations. And he is a wanted man.”
“Wanted! For what?” Leo asked dumbly. He tried to recall as much as he could about the workhouse riots. Had they not resolved it? Had Lysander not been hailed a hero for bringing the plight to the awareness of the king and Parliament?
“He asks, respectfully, if you might meet him in the palace gardens tomorrow afternoon at three.”
Leo snorted. “He won’t come here but will meet me in the palace gardens?”
“The walls of public houses have too many ears.”
“And the palace gardens don’t? If he can’t enter a public street, how will he enter the palace grounds? How am I to know that this is not some sort of trap?”
“I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but I can’t answer your questions. Lysander has his ways, and I will not pretend to understand how he does what he does. He has determined the palace grounds might be the safest place for him. No one would think to look there for him, would they? He asks that you receive him there, free of advisers and observers.”
Leo’s suspicions ratcheted. What could the man possibly want with him? “I know nothing of workhouses,” he blustered. “I know nothing of anything. I’ve been in England the last six years. Why did he not send a note? Why have me kidnapped on the occasion of my brother’s wedding?”
“It is my deep regret if you believed you were being kidnapped, or—”
“Or murdered,” Leo reminded him.
The man winced. “You must know that there are those close to you who would obstruct any effort he made to speak to you.”
Leo stared at the man. What was he implying? That there were spies around him? “Who?” he demanded.
The large man behind him whistled. The smaller man started. “Tomorrow, in the palace gardens at three. Please. It is very important,” he said, and hurried to the entrance of the alley.
“Wait,” Leo commanded. “Wait.”
But neither of them waited. Leo started after them, but a beat too late. By the time he reached the entry to the alleyway, they had disappeared. He looked around wildly and saw Kadro walking down the street toward him. “Where have you been?” Leo exclaimed.
Kadro looked surprised. “We have the carriage, Your Highness.” He nodded to something past Leo. He whirled around—Artur was standing beside a waiting carriage, facing the several people on the street who had gathered to see who the carriage was intended to serve. Leo looked at Kadro again, his confusion mounting. Had his guards known he’d be accosted? Had they been part of it? Were they the spies? In London, after Matous’s murder, Bas had told him he could trust no one. But Leo had never dreamed that would extend to two men who had been his paid companions for several years now.
He felt uncomfortably confused and said nothing more, but turned and strode toward the carriage, his gait much steadier now that his heart had beat a good portion of the inebriation out of him.
In the privacy of the carriage, Leo leaned back against the squabs and closed his eyes. There was a dull throb at the base of his skull now. This was absurd. He wasn’t meeting anyone in the palace gardens on the morrow! He was incensed he’d been cornered like that and incensed with himself for being so careless.
His rage mixed badly with the ale and left him feeling sour.
CHAPTER FOUR
Their Majesties King and Queen of Alucia were pleased to host a royal ball celebrating the nuptials of Crown Prince Sebastian to Lady Eliza Tricklebank at Constantine Palace. The guests included dignitaries and heads of state from European and Asian capitals, and a healthy contingent of English nobility.
The wedding cake was made of five tiers and towering three feet, adorned with marzipan gold doves that appeared to be flying around the cake. Guests feasted on fine Alucian beef and
Krantanhange,
a delicacy made of potato, leek and asparagus. The ball was performed by a ten-piece orchestra, and a mix of Alucian dances and the standard English fare of waltz and minuet rounded out the sets.
A new bachelor has emerged as the most eligible from the fraternity of princes. Judging by the number of Alucian heiresses casting kohl-lined eyes in his direction and flocking to the side of this debonair prince, one might assume with utmost certainty that wedding bells soon will ring again in Helenamar.
It is noted that Alucian women do not shy away from cosmetics to enhance their appearance. Upon observing the beauty of Alucian women, we can highly recommend the application of almond complexion cream to one’s face every night before sleeping.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
CAROLINE’S GOWN FOR the wedding ball was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen. The pale blue-and-gold Alucian style was cut so tightly to her figure that she could scarcely breathe. But she didn’t care—so many ladies and gentlemen would admire her in it that it would be worth the discomfort.
She’d commissioned the gown for such a dear sum that she’d been compelled to convince the modiste to submit two invoices in two separate months, each for half the amount, so that her brother Beck would not know the true cost. He tended to be very cross when she purchased clothing and sundries. And as the train had not suited her, Caroline had made her own. It was, in her eyes, a work of art.
As she’d readied for the ball, she tried to entice Hollis to admire the gown, too, but as usual, Hollis was bent over paper, writing furiously, capturing every moment for her gazette.
Hollis’s periodical had been originally established by her late husband, Sir Percival. His publication had been a once-monthly conservative gazette that highlighted political and financial news in London. After his tragic death in a carriage accident, Hollis refused to let the gazette go. She was determined that the paper survive to honor Percival. However, she didn’t know a lot about politics and finances, so she turned the gazette on its head and dedicated it solely to topics that interested women. Now the gazette was bimonthly with more than three times the subscriptions of Percival’s and growing.
Caroline took it upon herself to point out how stunning was her gown. “Look at how beautiful I am!” she declared, holding her arms wide. “I think my gown is as beautiful as Eliza’s. Don’t you?”
Hollis barely looked up. “I can’t see the gown, really—I am blinded by your modesty.”
Caroline snorted. “Someone must make note of this gown, and if no one will, I will.”
“The gown is stunning. But Beck is right, Caro—you are terribly vain.”
“Well, it’s hardly my fault, is it? I’ve been so long admired that I can’t help but believe my appeal.”
Hollis looked up, surprised by Caroline’s lack of humility.
Caroline laughed. “I was teasing you, Hollis, although you must admit there is some truth to it. Now will you look at my gown? Frankly, it’s better than even yours, and I thought yours was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“Your gown is always better than mine,” Hollis said, and leaned back, examining Caroline from head to toe. “You’re right. It is beautiful. You are beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Caroline said, and dipped a small curtsy. She whirled back to the mirror, and in doing so, caused one side of the train to come unbuttoned and fall. “Oh bother.”
“Come,” Hollis said, gesturing her forward like a child. She refastened Caroline’s train to one of the buttons meant to keep it from dragging twenty feet behind her. “Remember, no sudden movements. They come undone when you twist and lurch about.”
“I do not lurch, and you remember to put your pencil away tonight,” Caroline said. “It’s the royal wedding ball, Hollis.”
“As my sister is the bride, I am keenly aware of the occasion, darling. And I am dressed for it, as you can see. But I will not risk forgetting a single detail! The only way to ensure that I don’t is to write things down as I observe them.”
Hollis’s dark blue eyes flashed with determination. Caroline knew that she wanted more than anything for her gazette to be taken seriously by everyone in London.
Ah, but Hollis looked so much like Eliza, even though her hair was so darkly brown it looked nearly black, whereas Eliza’s hair was the color of spun gold. The sisters were very comely women. If Caroline didn’t love them so, she would be envious. “You know, darling,” Caroline said slyly, “if you were to look up from your notes, at an event like this it is quite possible that you might meet your one and only.”
Hollis gasped as if Caroline had slapped her. “How dare you even suggest it, Caro! Percival was my one and only, and there won’t be another! It’s not possible there will ever be another love like what we shared.”
Caroline turned slightly so that Hollis could not see her roll her eyes. The way she went on about her late husband was enough to make womankind across the globe give up any hope of finding perfect love, because Hollis and Percy had taken it and locked it away, never again to be experienced in this world with the same intense passion.
And yet there were some—including Caroline, frankly—who believed that the beautiful Widow Honeycutt had found her next love in her houseman, Donovan. Everyone who had ever called at Hollis’s house noted the striking good looks and virile physique of her butler. Or manservant. Or cook—whatever role it was Donovan filled. Hollis was rather vague about it, and Donovan was slavishly devoted to her. Caroline assumed he and Hollis were having a forbidden love affair. She certainly would be tempted if she were in Hollis’s shoes. A woman of her standing would not publicly consort with a manservant, but behind closed doors, well... Hollis was a widow after all.
“Keep your mind to your one and only,” Hollis muttered.
Caroline didn’t say anything. She supposed it was possible—after all, important gentlemen of all stripes would be in attendance. So would that wretched Prince Leopold, who always looked so detached, as if he thought himself above everyone else in the room. All right, she would concede that by virtue of his very good looks and his princely title he was above most, but he wasn’t a king, for heaven’s sake. But never mind him. She refused to think about him another moment. She had thought about him entirely too much in the last few weeks when she should have been thinking about much more important things.
She examined her reflection in the mirror. She practiced moving, taking care to dip this way and that, not only because of her elaborate train, but also because her décolletage, dear God, plunged so low that it was entirely possible that everyone at the ball would spot her navel.
Beck would be so displeased with it. She smiled.
She was equally certain that if Prince Leopold saw her, he’d be very pleased with her figure...if he wasn’t already swimming in his cups. He seemed to swim in them quite a lot.
It was getting the prince to see her that was the bother. Not that she cared if he did, but it was the principle of it. They were practically kin now, and yet she had the distinct impression he didn’t care for her. She couldn’t imagine why not. She hadn’t done anything untoward. She hadn’t spread awful rumors about him. She hadn’t committed any social faux pas in his presence.
She could never seem to get as much as a moment with him—he was constantly surrounded by footmen, Alucian gentlemen, and women. Scads and scads of women. Why were there so many women in the world?
Caroline grew restless, and as Hollis could not be persuaded to stop making her notes, she would not wait politely for Beck to arrive. So she went out of their suite and wandered down the hallway without Hollis even noticing.
Caroline had discovered in the last month that there was a point in the upper floor hallway that curved around an opening beneath a glass cupola in the roof, built to allow light to the floors below. At a particular bend in the hall, one could look over the balustrade and see down two floors below, to the entrance to this part of the palace.
She and Hollis and Beck were housed in a private wing of the palace, where family guests and some members of the extended royal family resided. Caroline liked to watch people come and go without being seen herself, as the shaft of sunlight made it difficult for people below to see up to the top floor. Standing here is where she’d seen Lady Senria Ferrassen arrive one evening in the company of the king’s equerry, and the two had parted with a quick and furtive kiss. Another blustery afternoon, she’d seen three chambermaids meet in the foyer and whisper excitedly to one another before all three of them disappeared quickly and in different directions when Lady Senria entered, her hair mussed, her cheeks rosy.
As Caroline was already dressed for the ball, she didn’t venture any farther than that point on the balustrade, hiding in plain sight. She wanted her gown to be seen for the first time when she made her entrance to the ballroom, as it ought, for maximum impact. At this hour, however, most were preparing for the evening or had already walked the distance to the main palace ballroom. There was nothing to see below, save the occasional footman or chambermaid hurrying across the black-and-white marble floor.
She grew bored with it and was turning to go when the entrance door swung open and a man walked in. He paused in the middle of the foyer, pushed his fingers through his dark brown hair, then settled his hands on his waist. That man, much to her great surprise, was clearly Prince Leopold. What was he doing at this hour dressed like that? He was wearing plain clothes and his hair was disheveled, and he stood a bit unsteadily, as if he’d just heard some bad news. And then, without warning, he looked up.
He looked up and directly at her with his ocean-blue eyes, and Caroline felt the intensity of his gaze radiating through her. She made a tiny little squeal of surprise and jumped back, clapping a hand to her heart. But she just as quickly surged forward and looked over the railing again. He was still there, and he suddenly smiled so charmingly and with such warmth that she quite lost her breath for a moment. He was actually smiling at her. And in response, she felt a very happy smile forming on her own lips. She could feel all sorts of things stirring, really—a laugh of delight. A gasp. A tingle in her groin.
“It would appear you’ve caught me, then,” he called up.
Caroline giggled. She didn’t know what to say for once. To agree would be to admit to spying. She would say that she was just passing by, or—
“I’ve caught you at your pleasure, I should hope,” responded a familiar voice.
Caroline gasped and jumped back again. That was her brother’s voice, and it came from the floor directly below her. He was undoubtedly on his way up to fetch her. She further realized that the prince had smiled so beatifically not at her but at her brother. At Beck! Blasted Beck! Always in the way!
“You could say,” the prince agreed.
“You’re to the ball, are you? I understand there is to be some high-stakes cards in the game room.”
Caroline backed away from the railing and began to hurry down the hall as quietly as she could, cursing the rustle of her skirts. She didn’t hear what the prince said in response, because her heart was thudding in her ears.
She burst into the suite of rooms she shared with Hollis.
“Lord, Caro, look what you made me do!” Hollis exclaimed crossly, and abruptly stood. Ink had spilled on her paper.
“I’m terribly sorry.” Caroline pressed her hands to her abdomen in the vain hope to temper her breathing, trying to catch her breath from the surprise. Where had the prince been, anyway, dressed like that? She’d wondered what had become of him during the reception. She’d been speaking with the Weslorian ambassador to England, telling him the story of the country house party at which a horse had run wild with a man on his back, necessitating rescue by no less than four gentlemen, when she noticed Prince Leopold was no longer visible from the corner of her eye. And when she turned to have a closer look, he was nowhere to be seen. He had slipped out without her noticing! Not that she was watching his every move, because she was not. She just had a tendency to notice things.
He’d run off for a tryst. Of course! What else would have taken him from the palace on this day? What else would see him return to the palace looking as if he’d fallen out of bed and right into his clothes? Were men so desperately sexual all the time?
A loud rap on the door was followed by it swinging open, and Beck strolled in. He paused just inside the doorway and stared at the two of them. “I had hoped that someone might have come and whisked you both down to the ball you’re determined to attend and thus spare me the deed. Alas, I see my dreams have been dashed.”
“A splendid good evening to you, as well, Beck,” Hollis said cheerily.
“My lord is customary, Hollis, but I’ll allow it in light of your obvious delirium of happiness at your sister’s nuptials.”
“Where have you been?” Caroline demanded. “I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
“What are you talking about? I was giving you ample time to admire yourself in the mirror,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Is it not obvious? I’ve been ready. We both have. You were expected a half hour ago.” She checked her hair in the mirror once more.
“I beg your pardon, but I was out with my Alucian friends. Cheerful lot, I must say. What has happened to the bodice of your gown, Caro? It looks to have gone missing.”
“You were with friends?” Caroline said, arching one brow, hoping to skim over the fact that her bodice had indeed gone missing, and moreover, she didn’t intend to look for it. “What friends? Of which gender?”
“One of two possibilities. Is that another new gown?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “How can you even ask? Of course it is—I couldn’t wear anything that I’ve already worn, not to tonight’s ball. Even you know that.”
“Do you think our funds flow from a bottomless well?” he asked crossly as he dropped into a seat. “You buy gowns as if they cost nothing.”
“Pardon, but wasn’t it you who purchased an Alucian racehorse just last week, Beck?” Hollis asked as she closed her notebook. “You buy horses as if they cost nothing.”
Beck pointed a finger at her. “You are not allowed to offer any opinion or observation just now. Did no one ever tell you to mind your own business?”
Hollis laughed. “Many times. But be forewarned—if I’m not allowed to speak my observations, then I shall write them.”
To the casual observer, this behavior between Hollis and Beck might have been deemed alarmingly impolite, but Beck had known Hollis and Eliza as long as he’d known Caroline. They were family, really. For years, Eliza and Hollis had summered with them at the Hawke country estate. Caroline was a frequent visitor to the home of Justice Tricklebank, their widowed father, who treated her like one of his own. And when their mothers, the best of friends, had died of cholera—Caroline’s mother succumbing after caring for Hollis and Eliza’s mother—Beck had treated Eliza and Hollis as if they were his wards, too.
In other words, he paid them no heed most of the time, and they paid him even less.
Beck stacked his feet on an ottoman. “I’m exhausted. All of this wedding business has taken its toll. I could sleep for days—”
“No, no, no,” Caroline said quickly. “You mustn’t make yourself comfortable, Beck. We’re already late! We must carry on to the ball—it would be the height of inconsiderate behavior to arrive after the newlyweds. You, too, Hollis. It’s time to go.”
“Just a moment,” Hollis said. “I’m making note about the purchase of a racehorse.” She glanced at Beck sidelong.
“Am I never allowed any peace?” Beck groaned. “For God’s sake, then, come on, the two of you. What joy I will experience when you’re both married and I may be relieved of my never-ending duty to escort you about town.”
“What an absurd thing to say,” Caroline said as she checked her headdress one last time. “We are the very reason you are able to attend these events without looking as if you haven’t a friend in the world. You need us, Beck.”
“What I need is silence and a bed,” he said blithely as he offered one arm to Caroline and the other to Hollis. “Let’s get this over and done, shall we, ladies?”
“Oh, Beck, how charming you are,” Hollis said dreamily. “Just when I think I despise you, I discover I love you all over again.”
WHEN LORD HAWKE and his charges had been announced and had entered the crowded ballroom, Caroline looked around for Prince Leopold. Naturally, after his afternoon of debauchery, he was nowhere to be seen.
She was inexplicably exasperated by his absence. Should he not have been here, in the center of attention, doing his duty as brother of the groom? Prince Sebastian and Eliza were due to arrive at any moment, but his brother couldn’t be bothered to arrive in time?
And why had he come into the private wing of the palace looking as if he’d been wrestling? The king and queen were here, as were a variety of Alucian nobility Caroline had met in the month she’d been in Helenamar.
Well, no matter—Caroline didn’t care a whit. Whenever he did deign to make his appearance, she was quite confident that her stunning dress and her obvious appeal would catch his eye. By then, of course, it would to be too late for him. By then she would be surrounded by admiring gentlemen and have no room for him on her dance card. Being admired was her forte, after all.
She checked her train to make sure it was securely fastened and sallied forth to meet all the gentlemen.
CHAPTER FIVE
With all the excitement of a very grand royal wedding, most would be content to come away with the experience of it. But for the families of several young women, the royal wedding ball was a perfect opportunity to begin talks of a new royal wedding. Alas, while Prince Leopold was seen dancing with no less than a dozen such young women, it is common knowledge that an engagement to a Weslorian songbird has all been arranged, and an announcement will soon be made.
This news did not prevent the only remaining bachelor prince in Alucia from departing the ball before anyone else.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
LEO REQUIRED TWO cups of medicinal tea and a cold bath before he began to feel in control of his faculties. He did not feel himself, really—that encounter in the alleyway had left him rattled. From his initial fear of imminent death, to the more insidious fear that someone was plotting against him, to the new fear creeping into his thoughts about what this Lysander fellow needed to say to him, he couldn’t seem to find his footing.
Were there truly spies among them? He had hoped that the cancer had been rooted out after the murder of Matous in London. That the palace had been swept clean of those plotting to overthrow the king. Then again, that sounded awfully naive, to think the palace had been swept clean of plotting and intrigue. Still, plotting and intrigue never had anything to do with him.
What could Lysander possibly want?
As Leo soaked in the bath, he tried to recall the details from the workhouse riots a few years ago. Lysander was a priest from the northern mountains of Alucia that formed the border with Wesloria. He’d come to the capital city, like so many other mountain people, in search of work. According to the reports about him at the time of the riots, he’d found deplorable conditions at the workhouses.
Once, Leo had been riding with friends through the streets of Helenamar. They had happened upon the man standing on an overturned crate, shouting at a crowd of people who gave him their rapt attention. “People are dying!” he’d bellowed. “The people in the workhouses lack clean water and decent food!”
“Did he say workhouse or whorehouse?” Edoard, one of Leo’s companions, had quipped. Their friends had laughed. Leo had not laughed. He’d wondered if what the man said was true.
He’d been intrigued by the mountain of a man with the unruly blond hair, and his courage to rebel about those conditions and thereby risk arrest and detention. “Do you suppose it’s true?” he’d asked his friends.
“No,” Edoard had said immediately. “He wants attention, that’s all.”
“He’s lucky he doesn’t have the attention of the metropolitan police,” Jacques had said.
“If Helenamar is to be the jewel of Europe, can such conditions exist for her residents?” the big man had asked the crowd. “If Alucia is to lead the way in economic development, can she treat the most common of her workers like dogs?”
The crowd was riled and began to chant back at him. Pane er vesi. Pane er vesi. Food and water.
“Will any of the men at the highest reaches of your government listen to a man like me?” he shouted.
“Noo!” the crowd roared back.
Lysander shook his head. “No. But they will listen to all of us.”
“Je, je, je, je!” the crowd began to chant.
“Come,” Edoard had said. “Before it gets out of hand.”
It wasn’t until another fortnight had passed that Leo’s curiosity peaked, and he found a way to have a look at the workhouses himself—incognito. He was completely unprepared and unaware of the conditions in which common people lived. The workhouses—dank, overcrowded and dirty—certainly had not been part of his education. People were suffering without adequate food, clothing or shelter. They were made to work long hours for a meager existence. He’d been incensed on their behalf. He’d been reminded again of how privileged he was. His conscience had been pricked.
He mentioned the conditions to his father one evening during a private meal. “Don’t listen to the false prophets, Leopold. The man wants fame. That’s all.”
Leo had tried to start a conversation with his father about it, but as usual, his father was uninterested in what he had to say. He’d smiled and said, “Worry about your studies, son.”
In the end, it was Leo’s mother who had turned the tide. “I don’t think you should ignore this man,” she said to her husband. “He seems dangerous to me.”
Leo never really knew what had happened after that—he returned to England and his very vibrant social life. But the Alucian Parliament took up the cause, and the workhouses were eventually shut down. Now factories provided modest housing for the workers.
By the end of his bath, Leo had determined it didn’t matter what Lysander wanted—Leo wouldn’t involve himself with it. He wouldn’t be in the garden tomorrow, because Leo was setting sail in two nights, no matter what.
There was a soft rap at the door, and then Leo’s valet, Freddar, appeared, holding a large towel. “Will you dress now, Your Highness?”
Leo sighed. “Je.” He couldn’t avoid the ball. All eyes would be on Leo tonight, more so than ever before. He was the new prized bull, the one everyone wanted as sire. For years, he’d watched Bas endure these evenings and the endless introductions to all manner of women—short and round, tall and thin. Beautiful and plain. Women with pleasing dispositions and those who were cold as fish. All of them wanting an opportunity to woo a crown prince. Leo was no crown prince, but as of today, he was the next best thing. It hardly mattered that his father had already negotiated a marriage—the wealthy and privileged would present their daughters and sisters to him like gifts from the Magi.
His long black formal frock was embellished with the dignitatis epaulets on the shoulders, denoting his rank in the military. A rank that was achieved by virtue of his birth and nothing else. He would also wear a royal blue sash onto which medals of his family’s name, military achievements and honors would be affixed. None of them belonged to him personally.
Those medals would complement the larger, ribboned medals that were pinned to his chest, also granted because of his titles and privileges and for nothing that he’d done. Such as the large bloom of white ribbon with a gold circle and pearls encrusted in the middle, the Order of the King’s Garter. There were more medals that signified his rank in the navy and the army—bestowed on him because he was a prince—as well as the Order of Merit and the Order of the Reeve, given to him by his father. And of course, his father’s coronation medal, another large gold piece with dark blue and gold ribbons, that celebrated Leo’s royal birth.
He was doused in the symbols and trappings of his family’s wealth and privilege, and he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve any of it. How was it fair that by virtue of his birth alone he should have such fortune? How was it fair that another child, born into lesser circumstances, would struggle through his or her life and accomplish far more than Leo ever would, yet not have a single medal worth so much? Any one of these medals on his chest would bring prosperity to a family for several years.
Why me?
That question had plagued him at various times in his life. He was eight years old the first time he’d asked it. He’d befriended a boy in the stables. His name was Tadd or something close to it. Leo couldn’t rightly recall his name, but he could still see his face, as if he’d spoken to him only yesterday. He and Tadd had formed a friendship over a horse. Tadd had taught him quite a lot about horses—how to brush their coats and manes, how to clean their hooves.
It had been Leo’s idea to sneak the horse from the stables and ride him. The freckle-faced lad was reluctant, but at Leo’s insistence, he went along with it.
When they were discovered, Tadd was dragged off the horse and roundly beaten in front of Leo, even as Leo cried for the stable master to stop. And then Tadd simply disappeared. Leo had been left with a searing sense of responsibility and unfairness about the whole thing.
That was the first time he’d been aware of the enormous privilege he enjoyed and how little he’d done to deserve it.
He had learned in the years that followed to turn a blind eye to those feelings and accept his life as it was and be grateful for it. That was easy to do when surrounded by the children of aristocrats who similarly had their lives handed to them. It was easy when he had the luxury to spend his days with his friends, or abroad. He’d grown lazy in that way wealth had of making a man disinclined to lift many fingers. Nothing was expected of him other than to finish his studies and not impregnate a chamber girl. That he could do.
He had learned to dull the tedium and the unfairness of it all with alcohol. What he wanted was to go back to England and the dissolute but happy manner in which he lived.
LEO WAS ANNOUNCED with enough fanfare to make his head throb, then escorted by two footmen on either flank to the dais where his parents sat on their thrones. As he walked, people on either side of his path bowed and curtsied. Such ritual, such unnecessary pomp.
Two chairs had been added to the dais beside the king for Bas and Eliza.
Leo greeted his father stiffly. “You look well enough,” his father said, his gaze apprizing.
“Where have you been, darling?” his mother asked. “You’re late.”
“Out,” he said, and bent to press his lips to her cheek. Queen Daria looked regal in her diamond-and-sapphire crown. On her gold gown, she wore nearly as many medals as he did. She was a beautiful woman, and when Leo was a boy, he’d worshipped her, held in thrall by her beauty. He’d longed for her attention and her smile, but both had been sparingly applied to him.
She smiled at him now and cupped his face when he leaned over her to kiss her cheek. “It has been the happiest of days to have my children here with me. I can’t wait for the day that you will make me as happy as Sebastian has today.”
Leo suppressed his groan.
“You’ll not wait long, my love,” his father assured her.
His mother leaned forward and whispered, “Have you met Lady Eulalie? She’s quite attractive.”
Leo shook his head. If he spoke, he wouldn’t be able to hide his anger.
“She is illunis,” his mother said, using the Alucian word for beautiful. “I think you will find her appealing.”
“Hopefully,” he said with a shrug.
“You will! We took into account your likes and dislikes, my darling.”
That was absurd. He’d never told his mother or father what he found attractive, and if they had truly taken into account his dislikes, they would know he disliked this exceedingly.
“Ah, here is Sir Ravaneaux,” his mother said. He turned to see her private secretary approaching the dais. “Sir Ravaneaux will see to it that the introduction to Lady Eulalie is made.”
Would he not be allowed as much as a glass of wine before the task of strengthening the ties between Alucia and Wesloria began? “Should I not congratulate the happy couple first?”
His mother’s eyes narrowed slightly. “But you’ve congratulated them, darling! We all have. Sir Ravaneaux, if you would,” she said, and waved Leo away like she did when he was a boy and he’d become bothersome. A flick of her wrist and a firm Off with you now, Leo.
Ravaneaux led Leo across the crowded ballroom with the two footmen trailing behind. It was a spectacle, people stepping out of the way to allow him to pass. Leo was keenly aware of the number of eyes on him, the low hum of whispers around him. As they neared the opposite side of the ballroom, an attractive woman came forward in the company of a man who looked to be about his father’s age. He was fit, with strong features, his clothing that of an aristocrat. The woman was as small as he was large. She was dressed in silk and jewels, and when she curtsied, she sank low in the way young ladies were taught at finishing schools. She wore the Weslorian dark green pinned to her breast. The gentleman likewise wore the band of green around his arm.
Ravaneaux said to him, “Your Royal Highness, may I introduce Lady Eulalie Gaspar of Wesloria,” he said. “And her father, the Duke of Brondeny.”
Leo bowed. “Your Grace,” he said to the duke. “My lady.”
They exchanged a few pleasantries, and the duke offered felicitations on the occasion of Sebastian’s marriage, then deftly stepped away under the pretense of speaking to Sir Ravaneaux, leaving Leo and Lady Eulalie alone...except for the attendance of dozens upon dozens of onlookers.
Lady Eulalie had small brown eyes and full lips, and her hair was the color of English tea. She arched a brow as she gave him a very thorough once-over, as if he were the milk cow she was considering purchasing. “I understand we are to befriend each other, Your Highness, and do it rather quickly.”
He appreciated her forthright manner and that she’d dispensed with the tedium of asking how he found the weather this time of year or mentioning how grand the ball. “I understand the same.”
“I’ve only recently been made aware of this friendship, so if I may make one small request?”
He nodded.
“I should like it to be quick.” She glanced away from him and across the ballroom.
Leo followed her gaze and noticed a stately Weslorian captain staring back at her. Well. At least she was open about her true intentions. He didn’t know how he felt about such openness, but he couldn’t help but admire it. “I will make this initial meeting as quick as the horse your ambassador boasts about.”
She laughed with surprise. “He does boast. I’ll go first, if I may?”
“Of course.”
“May I compliment you on how well your brother looked today? His bride is lovely.”
“Thank you. Very kind of you to say.”
“She is an English commoner, is she not?”
It was not a question, but a comment that Leo supposed he was to confirm or deny. He didn’t suspect Lady Eulalie was doing anything more than attempting to make small talk as the situation required, but the question rankled him nonetheless. He hated that sort of question—it was not meant to inform, but to get at the heart of the matter: who outranked whom. He wished he was at the Foxhound with a tankard of ale instead of playing this game. Mercy, how soon he’d forgotten his vow not to drink. “She is not,” he said politely. “At least not anymore.”
Lady Eulalie laughed with delight. “Quite true,” she cheerfully agreed.
The trumpets suddenly blared from an alcove above their heads, announcing the arrival of the happy couple.
“Ah, here they are now, the handsome prince and his very fortunate bride,” Lady Eulalie said, and craned her neck forward to see. A line of English soldiers marched into the room beside a line of Alucian soldiers, and in a choreographed move, they turned to face one another, unsheathed their swords and held them aloft, crossing the tips. The effect was to form an aisle. A moment later, Bas and Eliza entered. Bas was dressed in his full military regalia, and Eliza in a frothy peach gown. She had donned a crown that Leo recognized as belonging to the royal collection. Her hand was on Bas’s arm, and from where Leo stood, he could see the slight tremor in her. He hoped one day soon she would become accustomed to all the attention—she would have it all her life.
He, along with everyone else in the ballroom, respectfully bowed to the future king and queen as they passed, and when he straightened up, he looked to his left to follow their progress to the dais. But when he did, instead of seeing the dais, he saw the glittering green eyes of Lord Hawke’s sister, the one who was clearly convinced of her own appeal. What was her name, for God’s sake? Why could he not recall it?
Leo liked Hawke quite a lot. He’d met him at a gentlemen’s club in London one evening some months ago, when they’d ended up at a gaming table together. They’d had a good laugh. They’d seen each other at various occasions since. But it was Hawke’s arrival in Alucia that had sparked their friendship. Leo had spent quite a lot of time in the gentleman’s company and now considered him a friend.
His sister, however, was a nuisance. Even now, when the entire ballroom seemed to understand that he and Lady Eulalie were to be allowed this moment, she was smiling at him with the eagerness of someone who meant to hop over to his side for a chat.
He averted his gaze. He was quite good at ignoring pointed looks. And women who smiled too eagerly. And women who thought they could merely bat their eyes and he would demand an introduction and offer her a kingdom. He was good at ignoring men, too, particularly those who wanted to know him with a hope for gain. And practiced politicians who wanted to whisper in his ear.
A pretty, green-eyed English miss was no challenge for him.
Bas and Eliza had walked the length of the ballroom to the throne dais and Eliza curtsied. The king stepped down from his throne and took Eliza’s hand, then escorted her up to the dais to sit in the chair beside him. Bas took his seat beside her. His father gestured to the couple and began to applaud. Everyone in the ballroom joined in, their applause hearty, shouting, “Vivat regiis reginae!”
Long live the royal princess.
The orchestra began to play in earnest, and it was official—against all possible odds in the known universe, Eliza Tricklebank was a Chartier, a member of the Alucian royal family.
“People are staring at us,” Lady Eulalie murmured.
“They will always stare,” Leo said, trying not to sound bitter about it.
“Yes, I suppose. The two of us have been tossed into a tiny boat on this sea of hopeful diplomacy, and we must make do with each other.”
At least she understood the rules of the game. “It would seem so.” He glanced at her, but Lady Eulalie’s attention was directed across the room, to her lover. Leo supposed he ought to be bothered by her brazen regard for the captain while standing next to him, and maybe he was, but at the moment, he couldn’t summon enough heart to care. Maybe they could enter this devil’s bargain with no expectations whatsoever. Perhaps he ought to keep more of an open mind about...
Leo was startled by what felt like an elbow or a shoulder to his back. He jerked around and looked right into the eyes of Hawke’s sister.
“Oh dear, I do beg your pardon!” She laughed and smiled so sunnily that, for a moment, Leo forgot she’d bumped into him. “How clumsy of me! I stumbled over my train. Oh!” She jerked the train around and, with one hand, reached behind her, he presumed, to fasten it. “I really do so admire the Alucian gowns, but the trains are beastly to wear.”
Once again, she had approached him without the slightest hesitation given that she was interrupting his conversation with Lady Eulalie. Once again, she was smiling and speaking to him as if they were fast friends. It was beyond his comprehension how the sister of a revered English baron could have so little care for proper etiquette. Not that he was devoted to proper etiquette and the rules that governed courtiers in this palace, but on this occasion, to bump into him and interrupt a conversation with another woman was too much. “Lady...” He paused, struggling to recall her name. His memory, he’d noted, was not helped when he overimbibed every night.
“Caroline,” she happily finished for him. “Caroline. Caroline Hawke? I am Lord Hawke’s sister.”
Ah, yes, Lady Caroline. “Yes, of course. Lady Caroline.” He inclined his head. Where was her brother? Better yet, where was the footman with champagne? Really, Hawke ought to keep a closer eye on his sister. Leo intended to ask her to fetch her brother, but she was leaning a bit to her right to see around him, her smile pointed at someone or something else. He realized then that she and Lady Eulalie had made eye contact. Lady Caroline was like a bird hovering, her head darting back and forth trying to get a good look at Lady Eulalie behind him. This was not how this meeting of his future wife was supposed to go, but Leo had neither the energy nor the desire to stop it. He sighed and said, quite reluctantly, “May I introduce you to Lady Eulalie of Wesloria.”
“A Weslorian!” Lady Caroline said with great enthusiasm. “How do you do? I’ve hardly met a single Weslorian. Yes, of course, there’s your bit of green. I’m surprised I didn’t spot it straightaway. I’m very observant, generally speaking. What an interesting habit it is for all Weslorians to wear a patch of green, isn’t it? I suppose it’s a bit like the Scottish and their tartan. I wish England were so inclined. We should wear ribbons to signify we are English, preferably yellow, as that is the color of happiness, and frankly, it goes well with my skin coloring. But I suppose the color of the ribbon would be left to the queen, wouldn’t it?”
Leo didn’t know what to say to the steady flow of words that came from the lady’s mouth. Neither did Lady Eulalie, as she was staring dumbfoundedly at Lady Caroline. No doubt she’d been raised, like all ladies, to believe that a woman should be demure in the presence of gentlemen and a prince.
“Lady Caroline Hawke of England,” Leo added unnecessarily. “As no doubt you just heard.”
Lady Caroline curtsied. When she did, Leo saw that everyone’s attention had turned to the dais because Bas and Eliza were coming down. The orchestra began to play an Alucian native dance.
“Very pleased to meet you,” Lady Caroline continued, rising from her curtsy. “Your gown, if I may say, is remarkable. I should ask for the name of your modiste, but I will be leaving for England soon, and quite honestly, I think my brother would have my head if I spent as much as a single farthing on another gown.” She laughed gaily, as if her brother’s displeasure at her spending habits was a lark. “Isn’t the ball lovely? The whole day has been such a delight and I’m very much looking forward to dancing. It is my absolute favorite thing. I adore it. Do you, Lady Eulalie? Do you, Your Highness?”
Lady Eulalie blinked. “Ah...” Her gaze flicked between Lady Caroline and Leo, as she obviously tried to assess the acquaintance between them.
Leo needed to dispatch this beautiful bother before she set all tongues wagging. But before he could consider how to do that, Lady Caroline said, “I recall you dancing at Kensington, Your Highness. Quite an admirably high kick you’ve got.”
Had he danced with her there? He’d had too much whisky that night, too, as was his unfortunate habit, and he didn’t recall it clearly. Perhaps that explained why she thought they were so familiar. Well. For the second time today, he desired very much to kick his own arse.
“The duke and duchess are starting their dance,” Lady Eulalie said.
Bas and Eliza had taken their places beneath one of the dozen enormous crystal chandeliers in the space the crowd had formed around them. Lady Caroline smiled with delight—and then gasped. “Oh dear, her train,” she moaned, and actually leaned against Leo as if to share a secret. “Do you see? It’s undone on one side. I’m sure she doesn’t know—oh! There is Hollis. Hollis will set it to rights. Hollis takes such good care of her, really. So do I, for that matter. I can’t imagine what she’ll do once we leave her, can you? She said she will have a lady’s maid, but it’s not the same, is it? Alas, we must return to London. I have my many friends, as you know, and Hollis, well...” She looked at Lady Eulalie. “Her father needs her desperately. He’s blind.”
Lady Caroline was astonishing. He hardly knew men as free of spirit and tongue as she was. He had never met a woman who wore her eccentricities with such confidence.
She wasn’t paying any attention to him now, as all eyes had turned to the royal couple. The music began, and Bas smiled encouragingly at Eliza as he led her into the first steps of the dance. Poor Eliza’s fair face turned as red as the cardinal’s robes, and she kept her gaze on Bas’s feet as she tried to match his movements.
“Lord, she’s as awful as I feared,” Lady Caroline said without the slightest compunction. “It’s really not her fault. Either one is born a dancer, or one is not, wouldn’t you agree?” She looked at him for an answer.
Leo said nothing. He would not dare criticize Eliza so openly.
“I’ve known more than one lady who has been given any number of dance lessons and can’t retain the steps,” she continued, and winced apologetically. “Eliza tries very hard, but it’s almost as if she can’t hear the music.”
“Oh dear,” Lady Eulalie said with a smile she could not contain.
Lady Caroline blinked as if she’d just realized what she was saying. “Oh! You mustn’t mind anything I say. If Eliza were standing here, she’d be the first to admit her poor dancing. She finds it rather amusing.”
She should certainly not remark so openly about a royal duchess, and by her given name at that. Even he wasn’t so irreverent. He felt a strange responsibility to defend his new sister-in-law. “If you would allow, Lady Caroline, I think you meant to say Her Royal Highness.”
Instead of demurring as he expected, perhaps even apologizing, Lady Caroline’s lovely green eyes rounded impossibly larger. And then she laughed. Chortled, really. “I meant Eliza, of course!”
Apparently Leo still had a bit of stodgy princely blood running through his veins, because he was appalled. Eliza was the future queen of Alucia, and Lady Caroline obviously didn’t fully understand that meant that even she was to afford her friend the respect she was due. If she wanted to call the duchess by her given name behind closed doors, that was one thing. But in a public setting? It could not be tolerated, and he believed he was doing Lady Caroline a kindness by intervening. He turned more fully toward her, so that his back was to Lady Eulalie. “I have no wish to embarrass you, Lady Caroline,” he said softly, “but I would have hoped that someone might have explained things to you before now.”
The light of the dozens of candles in the chandeliers above them sparkled in her eyes. “What things?” she asked as her gaze wandered his face and settled, somewhat disconcertingly for Leo, on his mouth.
“Your friend is the future queen of Alucia. As such, you must show her the respect that all her subjects must show her.” He arched a brow to emphasize that point. Part of him couldn’t believe he was having to say these things. Certainly he had never been one to defend or promote royal decorum. But he’d never been confronted with such an obvious breach of decorum, either. “That would include how you address her...particularly in public.”
Lady Caroline’s mouth dropped open for a sliver of a moment. And then her eyes narrowed into brilliant slits of ire. “I do beg your pardon, Highness. I understand perfectly that Eliza will be the future queen, but I am her dearest friend and I don’t think it is for you to say what I call her.” One of her feathery brows arched high above the other, daring him to disagree.
Her redress absolutely stunned him. And, on some level, bloody well impressed him. That was some cheek for you. But it could not be tolerated, not in this palace, so he glared down at her so that she would not mistake his displeasure. “You should not address the duchess as anything other than Your Grace, and you most certainly should not address me in this manner.”
Amazingly, she gasped as if she were the one who had suffered an insult. She squared off against him and lifted her chin. “Do you call your brother Your Grace and scrape and bow before him?”
“Of course not. He’s my brother, and I myself am a royal prince, lest you’ve forgotten.”
“Forgotten!” A burst of laughter escaped her. “I don’t know how I could—you wear it like a shield.”
His astonishment kept ratcheting. And he might faint dead away if it continued. “Have you considered that is perhaps because I am, indeed, a prince?”
“Oh, I am well aware!” she said grandly. “You told me. In Chichester. Although it was hardly necessary there, either. But in the course of our conversation, you were very sure to mention it.”
Chichester again! “For the love of...” Leo glanced back at Lady Eulalie, who was craning her neck to hear every word. He abruptly took Lady Caroline by the elbow and moved her away a few steps so that he could speak privately. With a quick look around them, he said quietly, “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I did mention it, for there are times it seems necessary, and I’ve no doubt that was one of those times. But please understand me, Lady Caroline—I do not recall any conversation with you, and I certainly do not recall meeting you in Chichester, or any conversation there. Frankly, I was far too in my cups to remember anything about that particular weekend at all. You must consider how many soirees and fetes and weekend house parties I attend. You must consider that I frequently meet women and often in groups, and I can’t be expected to remember them all.”
She gasped softly, her plush lips forming a near perfect O. Her eyes filled with shock or fury—he wasn’t entirely sure which. “I’m terribly sorry if the truth offends you.”
“The truth of what? That you were as tight as a boiled owl?”
He had heard that rather English expression for being pissed. “I wouldn’t put it precisely that way, but yes.”
“That doesn’t offend me,” she said. “I know a drunk gentleman when I see one. What offends me is that you would lump me in with the all the women you meet frequently and in groups, like a flock of chickens! I’m not a chicken, Your Highness. I am unique.”
“Chickens! You miss my point entirely,” he said, exasperated.
Her eyes widened to such a degree he thought she might keel over with some sort of apoplexy. But she didn’t keel—she rebounded and looked as if she might launch herself at his throat at any moment. He prepared himself for the possibility.
“You have missed the point. You may have noticed that I tend to stand out in a crowd.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. She certainly did stand out in a crowd. She was standing out in all her blazing glory at this very moment. “Are you praising your virtues?” he asked with disbelief.
“I didn’t praise them! I merely pointed out what is obvious to everyone but you, apparently.”
“What the devil is happening here?”
At last, thank the saints, Lord Hawke had arrived to take her away.
“I believe His Royal Highness and the lady are having a row,” Lady Eulalie said excitedly.
Lady Caroline whipped around, nearly colliding with her brother. Hawke bowed his head to Leo. “Your Highness, my sister and I offer our deepest felicitations on the marriage of your brother and our most sincere apologies for anything that might have been said to displease you.” He put his hand on his sister’s elbow, his fingers curling into her flesh as he drew her back with determination.
Leo inclined his head to acknowledge the apology. His heart was still beating rapidly with his indignation, and that little devil’s eyes were shining with her vexation.
Hawke smiled thinly at Leo. “If you will excuse us?” He pulled his sister into his side and forced her to walk away with him.
Leo silently but smugly cheered his friend on as he watched Hawke march away with his sister. But stubborn Lady Caroline tossed Leo a dark look over her shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.
Leo stared after her a long moment, still trying to understand what had just happened, then remembered Lady Eulalie. He turned to her.
She looked delighted. “Who, pray tell, was that?”
“Just an Englishwoman,” Leo muttered. The most exasperating, infuriating, ridiculous and attractive Englishwoman he’d ever met. Oh, but she was right about that—she did stand out in a crowd, and in more ways than one.
“Ah, the English. They are too isolated on that little island of theirs, I think. They don’t know how the world moves around them,” Lady Eulalie said.
Leo said nothing. All he could think was what a burden Lady Caroline was to her brother, whom he considered to be a fine man and good friend. She might be beautiful, but unfortunately, that beauty was accompanied by outrageous behavior.
Lady Eulalie was smiling, clearly having enjoyed the show. Many people around them were watching as well, and Leo realized it was time to start the charade of a courtship. “Now that we’ve dispatched with that, may I have the pleasure of this dance?”
“I’d be honored, Your Highness,” Lady Eulalie said gracefully and in a manner that a woman ought to address a prince.
Bloody Englishwoman.
As it happened, that was not the last Leo saw of Lady Caroline that evening. He spotted her dancing with Lord Sonderstein. The old man was practically drooling into her very enticing bodice. She was looking off to the side and appeared almost bored, as if she’d danced with a leering gentleman a thousand times before.
He saw her twice more after that, once laughing with a captain of the Alucian navy as they moved through an Alucian dance, and then with an Englishman Leo recognized from a hunting party he’d joined last autumn.
Later still, Leo thankfully left his supposed fiancée and escaped to the gaming room. He happened upon Lord Hawke and took a seat at his table. As another gentleman dealt him in, Leo said, “I hope your sister’s feathers are not too terribly ruffled.”
Hawke rolled his eyes. “She’s fine. She’s prone to dudgeon, that’s all.”
“Aren’t they all,” Leo said, and he and his friend and the other gentlemen at the table laughed roundly and loudly.
CHAPTER SIX
The much beloved Duchess of Tannymeade, England’s own Lady Eliza Tricklebank, has generously graced her British wedding guests with fine porcelain teapots commemorating the occasion of her marriage to Prince Sebastian of Alucia. Several of the British contingent have found the Alucian silks to their liking, and many trunks were purchased to carry the goods home. Expect to see these stunning fabrics at social events in autumn.
So festive were the wedding celebrations that many wedding guests were reluctant to return home. One English guest in particular found it difficult to leave her new friend, a gentleman very much in his prime. But home she did go, to another gentleman who is rumored to be approaching his prime.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
WELL.
As it turned out, her stunning dress and her obvious appeal were not enough to entice Prince Leopold. Not that she’d wanted to entice that boor of a man, but that did not erase the fact that he ought to have been. Oh no—she’d had to go to him, engage him, and how dare he say he didn’t recall her at all and liken her to the squads of debutantes who swirled around him at every public event?
“Why wouldn’t he remember me?” Caroline demanded of Eliza and Hollis the next afternoon as they strolled the palace gardens. “Everyone remembers me. It’s so boorish, isn’t it? He’s a haughty prince, and I, for one, have had enough of his prideful ways.”
“Ha,” Hollis snorted. “You don’t mean that at all.”
“I do! Does he truly expect me to call Eliza Your Highness after all these years of knowing her? I called her Eliza Picklecake until I was twenty years old.”
“Oh!” Eliza said with a fond grin. “I had completely forgotten that nickname.”
Caroline ignored her. “What a pompous, superior arse that man was! It was fortunate for him Beck intervened when he did, or I might have...well, I don’t know, but I would have liked to—”
“Ask him to dance,” Hollis cheerfully interjected. “You were dying to dance with him.”
“All right, yes, I wanted to dance with him if for no other reason than my gown would be seen. I’m just saying that I don’t give a fig who he is—he is rude.”
“Caro! Keep your voice down,” Eliza whispered, and glanced over her shoulder at the two palace guards who followed several feet behind them.
Caroline made a harrumphing sound at being told what to do. “Really, you know, I don’t care if he remembers me or not.”
Hollis giggled with disbelief.
“It’s a matter of pride, Hollis. Certainly I don’t recall every acquaintance I’ve ever made, but I like to think I remember most. And there happen to be two I remember with crystal clarity.”
“I wait with bated breath to hear who they are,” Eliza said.
“Well, one is His Royal Arse, Prince Leopold, which I should think is rather obvious.”
“Caro!” Eliza hissed, looking over her shoulder once more at the two guards who followed them. “You are in Alucia! On the palace grounds! You can’t go round calling Leo names.”
“And the second is the Alucian gentleman with the hook nose,” Caroline continued, as if Eliza hadn’t spoken. “You remember, don’t you, Hollis? I pointed him out to you at the ball.”
“Did you?” Hollis asked, her brows knit as she tried to remember. “Oh! Yes, I remember—the gentleman who never once looked at you. Is that the one you mean?”
“The very one!”
“It was his loss, darling,” Eliza said soothingly.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Caroline asked weakly. “Thank you for saying so, Princess Eliza.”
“Princess? Or is it duchess?” Hollis asked curiously.
“I don’t really know,” Eliza said with a flick of her wrist. “They’ve told me, but I can’t remember. What does it matter? One is as good as the other to me.”
“Well, that’s just the thing, Eliza—one is better than the other,” Caroline said. “How can you not remember if you are to be addressed as princess or duchess?”
“I think if we just address her as Your Highness, it covers all of them,” Hollis suggested.
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Very well, Your Highness, but you’ve been Eliza to me since I was three and you six.”
“For heaven’s sake, Caro, I don’t care what you call me,” Eliza said. “My only request is that you not speak of Leo with such disdain. It’s impolite and badly done when you’ve been a guest of his family for a full month.”
Caroline couldn’t argue with her logic. All the other thousands or millions of Alucians had been quite welcoming, and she was being rude. “You’re right, as is usually the case,” she said with a sigh. “All right, then, consider him utterly forgotten.”
That wasn’t true, and knowing herself as well as she did, Caroline supposed she would probably continue to be rude as far as he was concerned. But she’d keep it to her private thoughts. Arse of Alucia. The pouty prince. Leopold the Rude.
“It’s just as well, darling, as the king means to formally announce his engagement soon.”
“His engagement!” Caroline said, perhaps a bit too loud. “But Beck said he’s returning to England.”
“Yes, he’s returning to England to pack up his things and whatnot. He’s due to return by the end of summer when it will be formally announced. But all the arrangements have been made from what I understand.”
Caroline was stunned into silence. For a moment. “Well, good luck to the lady. She will desperately need it. She’ll be a royal princess or duchess or what have you, but she’ll be married to him. They may call her Your Highness, but she’ll have him to look at across her breakfast table.”
Two women approaching them on the walk stepped out of the path and curtsied as the three of them passed. Caroline looked back at them, still amazed that Eliza Tricklebank could elicit that sort of response from anyone.
“Truthfully? I’d be very happy to be known simply as Mrs. Chartier,” Eliza said.
Caroline couldn’t help but laugh. That was Eliza—never one to pay much mind to social conventions. “You’re impossible, darling! Why should you not embrace your new title and wear it proudly? How will we ever leave you to your own devices?”
“Well, I have Bas now,” Eliza said, and her eyes shone in that magical way they had since her prince had come to fetch her from her father’s house in London.
“It’s not the same,” Caroline insisted. “He will flatter you and never find any fault with you.”
Eliza looped her arm through Caroline’s. “I will miss you both terribly, but I will manage. There will be someone at every turn to tell me what to do.”
“Then what am I to do without you?” Caroline asked, and felt herself turn a bit misty. “Who will find fault with me? God knows I need it from time to time. Who will compliment the dresses I make, whether or not they’re the least bit good? I need that even more.”
“Beck,” Eliza said.
Caroline gave her a look of incredulity, and Eliza and Hollis burst into laughter. “Of course not Beck,” Eliza said gaily. “Hollis will, of course!”
“Hollis! She has her nose in that blasted gazette.”
“If you help me, Caro, I vow to compliment you all you like,” Hollis said. “But never mind that—I’m desperate to tell you both that I have the most amazing on-dit. This morning, I had my tea on the terrace outside our room. And who do you think I saw flirting shamelessly with the Alucian prime minister?”
“Oh dear,” Eliza said. “What is his name? Lord Cebutari?”
“Yes,” Hollis confirmed. “They were here, in this very garden, having a walkabout.” She stole a look at the guards over her shoulder. “They were so close she was very nearly in his pocket. I can’t swear for certain that her hand was not in his pocket.”
“Who?” Caroline demanded.
Hollis quickly glanced around, then whispered, “Lady Russell.”
Eliza and Caroline gasped at the same time. “No,” Eliza whispered hotly. “He’s fifty if he’s a day, and she’s so young.”
“They disappeared behind the hedges,” Hollis whispered. “And when they emerged, her hair was mussed. She is smitten, I tell you. Isn’t it ironic that her husband is rumored to be the next prime minister of England? I hear Peel will be gone soon.”
“If she is smitten with the Alucian prime minister, what will she do when we return to England?” Caroline whispered.
“What does any married lady do when she finds true love? Tell her friends, naturally,” Hollis said. “And then try like the devil to keep her husband from finding out.”
They walked along for a few feet, each of them lost in their thoughts about this new development. “My feet are killing me,” Eliza complained. “I’ve been on them far too much this week. I should like a bench to appear just now.”
“Your Grace.” One of the guards came forward. “If I may, there are benches just there, beyond the bend,” he said, pointing to the path ahead. “There is a small clearing in the hedgerow with a fountain for sitting.”
All three women stopped and stared at the guard as he moved back to stand with his companion, the both of them at attention.
“Ah...thank you,” Eliza said. She turned back to the walk and linked her arms through Hollis’s and Caroline’s and yanked them close. “Have they heard everything?” she whispered.
“I don’t know!” Caroline whispered back. “Lord, how long is this business with the guards to go on?”
“Forever?” Eliza answered uncertainly.
“There you are, Eliza!”
The familiar voice of Prince Sebastian startled them, and they drew to a halt and looked down a path that intersected the one they were walking on. Prince Sebastian was striding forward, ahead of Prince Leopold, Lady Eulalie and the queen. Behind them, more guards.
“Be kind,” Hollis muttered. “That’s her. She’ll be his fiancée.”
“What?” Caroline muttered back as they sank into curtsies before the queen.
“I’ve been looking for you, darling,” Prince Sebastian said. He took Eliza into his arms and kissed her. Caroline’s heart fluttered madly, and she inadvertently glanced at Prince Leopold. He was looking at the ground, his hands clasped at his back. He looked a little green around the gills, she thought. So green that if she poked him, she’d wager he’d fall over. It took Caroline a moment to realize that Lady Eulalie was looking directly at her with a funny little smile on her face.
“How are you, dearest?” the queen said to Eliza. As Eliza began to speak of her good health and whatnot, Caroline shifted her gaze to Lady Eulalie again. “Good afternoon,” she said with a polite nod.
Lady Eulalie serenely nodded her acknowledgment of the greeting but then stepped forward and said to Eliza, “Your Grace.” She curtsied deeply and perfectly, and Caroline didn’t know if she should admire her or hate her for it.
“Oh,” Eliza said, clearly not expecting a curtsy still. “Thank you.”
Not thank you, Eliza. Caroline bit her bottom lip and looked at her feet.
“Have you met our Lady Eulalie?” the queen asked. “She comes from a very good Weslorian family. The sort of Weslorians who consider the Alucians friends and not foe.” She tittered. Everyone tittered with her.
Caroline tittered the loudest—she was no fool. And when she did, she looked again at Prince Leopold. This time, she caught him looking past her, as if he was bored by this meeting. He slowly turned his gaze to her. Caroline arched a brow, flicked her gaze over him, then lifted her hand, palm up, silently questioning why he looked at her.
His brows knit in a disapproving frown, and then, damn him, he gave her a slight roll of his eyes and looked away.
He rolled his eyes.
That was it. Caroline had given that man all the chances she would give him. It was, as Eliza said, his loss. His very great loss.
“Lady Caroline, Hollis...will you allow us to steal my wife away?” Prince Sebastian asked. “We’ve a little surprise for her.”
“A surprise!” Eliza said. “I don’t think I can bear any more surprises.”
“Oh, I think you’ll like this,” the queen said.
“I’ll see her returned to you for tea, on my word,” Prince Sebastian said eagerly, and leaned forward and kissed Hollis’s cheek.
“Your Majesty, here is where I shall take my leave,” Prince Leopold said, and stooped to kiss his mother’s cheek.
“What? Where are you going? Will you not join us?”
“I’ve a prior engagement,” he said, and with a curt nod to everyone, he strode off before anyone else could speak.
The queen watched him go, then sighed and smiled sympathetically at Lady Eulalie. But Lady Eulalie gave the queen a slight shrug as if she didn’t mind at all.
Sebastian offered his hand to his wife. Eliza took it with a smile of pure adoration. The affection between these two was beginning to nauseate Caroline. Could two people really be so in love? She couldn’t imagine it—she’d never once felt the flutterings Eliza had described when she realized she’d fallen in love with Prince Sebastian. She had never felt anything more than a passing fancy, one that generally flamed brightly and died quickly as soon as the next, more attentive gentleman appeared. There had been times Caroline had wondered if there was something a little bit wrong with her in that regard. A heart too small or something like it.
“Come for tea!” Eliza called over her shoulder as her prince led her away in the company of Queen Daria and Lady Eulalie, and all the guards bringing up the rear. Hollis and Caroline realized at the same moment they were suddenly very much alone in the huge garden. It struck Caroline that she and Hollis would be very much alone in a matter of two days when they left Eliza’s fairy tale and returned to England without her. “Oh dear,” she said, and grasped Hollis’s hand. “I’m going to miss her terribly.”
“Me too,” Hollis said weakly. “Oh my, me too.” She sighed and looped her arm through Caroline’s. “Shall we return to our suite, then? There are a few notes I should like to make before we begin to pack.”
The day was lovely, and really, it was the first bit of air they’d had since festivities leading up to the wedding had begun. “I think I’d like to walk a little longer,” Caroline said.
“All right.” Hollis let her go. “Is it me, or does it feel strange to walk without a guard trailing behind?”
“It’s you,” Caroline said, and laughed. “I hope to never see a guard again.”
She watched Hollis stride off in the direction of the palace. Caroline went in the opposite direction, pleased to be free and alone, enjoying the sun and the air. After one full circuit of a considerable expanse of garden, she recalled the palace guard informing Eliza of benches at the center. The walking paths had been cut through hedgerows trimmed into various shapes and sizes, and every so often one would pass a seating area cut out of the shrubbery. She began to weave her way through the gardens toward the center. It would be nice to sit and think a bit in peace and quiet. She was in no hurry, pausing to look at various plants, or—blast it—to affix a train that had come loose. But as she neared the point where Eliza had left them, she heard low male voices.
Caroline slowed her step and moved quietly, pausing just outside the seating area. She leaned forward, trying to see through the thick bushes who was speaking.
She couldn’t see much of anything and leaned forward a little more. Suddenly, a man moved into her line of sight, his back to her. She surged backward, startled. She looked around, noticed a thinner part of the shrubbery where she might be able to see and crept toward it.
The men were speaking in Alucian. And then one abruptly said in English, “You can’t come here with this news.”
She froze. That was Prince Leopold. She dipped down to see through the shrubbery and saw the back of the man again. Oh, that was Prince Leopold, all right. She’d know that strong, square back anywhere. Or the collar-length dark brown hair brushed back behind his ears. But who was he speaking to?
Prince Leopold spoke again, but in Alucian. His voice was low, the cadence swift, the tone sharp.
Another man responded in Alucian. Caroline craned her neck to see, and when she caught a glimpse of the other man, she was all the more curious. He looked decidedly less privileged than the prince. He was broad, and his clothes very plain. His yellow-blond hair was unkempt and stuck out in a number of directions.
Prince Leopold spoke again, and he sounded slightly frantic. The other man smiled sadly at whatever the prince had said, nodded solemnly and said, “Je.”
She knew that meant yes.
Prince Leopold scraped his fingers over the crown of his head, looked once more at the mountain of a man and then, quite abruptly—or so it seemed to Caroline—walked out of the clearing.
She moved deeper behind the hedgerow. She waited for the man to go, but he dipped down beside a fountain and cupped his hands, bringing water to his face. He scrubbed his skin, then smoothed his scraggly beard. He seemed content to sit and think. Caroline meant to creep away, but when she tried, she found that blasted train snagged on the shrubbery. If she freed herself now, he would hear the rustle of her skirts.
After a few moments, he stood and began to amble toward the entrance of the clearing. By then, however, another sound had caught her attention, and Caroline glanced back to the path. Palace guards were quietly advancing toward the seating area the big man was about to leave. Her breath caught in her throat. She desperately wondered if she ought to warn the man, but before she could speak, it was too late.
The larger man tried to run, but he was no match for the younger, fitter guards, and they tackled him to the ground. Caroline may have cried out with alarm as they wrestled him, but it didn’t matter—no one heard her over the tussle. It took three guards to drag the man to his feet while one bound his hands. Two more guards appeared to help drag him away.
After they’d gone, Caroline stood rooted to her spot, still shaking a little. Who was that man? Had they arrested him? Had Prince Leopold set the guards on him?
What on earth had she just witnessed?
CHAPTER SEVEN
A supper was held to conclude the royal wedding festivities, attended by the few remaining foreign dignitaries who had traveled from afar to attend the wedding. The Duchess of Tannymeade hosted the supper as one of her first official acts. For the occasion, Queen Daria lent her a tiara boasting sixteen emeralds and matching the emerald earrings the queen had earlier presented her as a gift.
There were many notable figures assembled for the last celebratory meal, and perhaps none so intriguing as the Wren of Wesloria, whose song is believed to have captured the heart of a royal prince. It is said the marriage agreement has already been negotiated. Expect a formal announcement by the end of summer.
Ladies, when traveling by sea, it is best to leave your finer fabrics in your trunk, as salt spray will ruin a good garment and keep your clothing damp.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
KADRO, LEO’S GUARD, casually reported that Lysander had been detained. The news sliced through Leo. “When?”
“This afternoon,” Kadro said. “In the palace gardens.”
After he’d left him? After Leo had strode from the garden with that terrible, heart-pounding feeling of unease?
Leo still didn’t know why he’d gone to meet Lysander at all. Maybe because he didn’t want to hear Eulalie sing again. He’d sat through two songs and it felt like ants were crawling up and down his legs, so anxious was he to be at anything else.
But his mother had been enthralled. “The duchess must hear,” she’d insisted, and away they’d all trooped, in search of Eliza.
Or perhaps he’d gone because he was afraid he would be saddled with Lady Caroline if he lingered. He didn’t know if he could engage in conversation with her without wanting to tie his neckcloth around her mouth. He imagined it for one gloriously silly and strangely arousing moment—Lady Caroline’s mouth bound while her eyes flashed hotly at him.
Whatever his reasons, Leo had gone.
Lysander was much larger than what he recalled, both physically and in bearing. Leo had immediately told Lysander he had no interest in anything he had to say, and to tell him so for his own good was the only reason he’d come round at all.
“Ah. Then you don’t care to know what your future father-in-law might be about?” Lysander had asked slyly. “The Duke of Brondeny?”
Well, that had certainly rattled Leo. He’d only just met the man himself. How could Lysander possibly know anything about the duke? “What of him?”
Lysander then told Leo something so outrageous and unthinkable that he was stunned. He warned Lysander that saying such things was dangerously slanderous. He said he didn’t believe it. “Lies. Whoever has told you this is lying.”
“When you return to England, there is a young woman who can prove to you what I say is true. She is in the employ of Lord Hill. Her name is Ann—”
“I don’t care,” Leo had said before he could fill him with any more scandalous news.
But Lysander patiently continued. “Her name is Ann Marble, and she is a maid in an important man’s house. She has assisted one of our—”
“You can’t come here with this news,” Leo hissed in English. Then in Alucian he said, “Not here, man! Do you think these walls don’t have ears?” He’d been so certain of it that he glanced over his shoulder. It felt to him as if the trees were listening.
“Mans princis, will you turn your back?” Lysander had asked quietly. My prince.
That had rattled Leo even more. Was he anyone’s prince? He might have been born into it, but in reality, he was a drunkard with a talent for avoiding conflict, duties and responsibilities. He’d very much wanted to turn his back the moment Lysander called him his prince. He’d wanted to walk away and hear no more of it. But something had kept him standing there. If there was even a scintilla of truth to what Lysander had told him, he couldn’t walk away.
But neither could he stand there and hear it. “Meet me tomorrow at the home of Jean Franck, the financier. He is a friend of mine. Do you know of him? His home?” he’d asked as his feeling of unease grew.
Lysander hesitated, but he nodded. “Je.”
“Two o’clock.” Leopold then left, striding away from the anxiety Lysander had produced, his thoughts on what he’d learned. As he neared the palace entrance, four palace guards stepped outside. They bowed to him in deference as he passed. One of them even uttered a greeting.
Leopold looked back at them as they carried on, uncertain what they were about. Were they on patrol? Looking for someone? But they appeared to be strolling along in no particular hurry, as if they were out for patrol. Had they detained Lysander?
Leopold could not shake the uneasy feeling that had come over him yesterday. Since Matous’s death, everything out of the ordinary left him feeling uneasy.
He left Kadro to dress for the last dinner with his brother and the few remaining guests. The king and queen would not be joining them this evening, and he was glad for it—that meant the evening would be far less formal and start sooner and end quickly. He wanted time to prepare to sail the next day.
But duty called, so he entered the salon that evening to join the guests.
He was immediately cornered by a Moroccan gentleman, Mr. Harrak. Harrak wanted to discuss the opium trade that shipped through the Mediterranean and how he believed his proposal to intervene in that trade could make them all quite rich in Morocco and in Alucia. “Why should Britain enjoy all the spoils?” he asked.
Leo listened with only half an ear—he had no interest in opium whatsoever. He’d known more than one man brought low by its “medicinal” qualities, and besides, he was no expert on trade—Bas was.
As Harrak ranted against the imperialism of England, Leo looked across the room and spotted Eliza standing with Lady Caroline. His sister-in-law looked radiant in a pale yellow gown. She had a sash of dark green across her breast, onto which two things had been pinned—the sapphire brooch Bas had presented her at their wedding, and a new medal that marked her entry into the royal family. The royal brand, so to speak. She was always charmingly a bit off-kilter, and tonight, the tiara his mother had lent her kept tilting to one side. Every time she righted it, Lady Caroline said something to make her laugh, and it slid a bit again. He considered, as Harrak continued to drone on, that Lady Caroline was the true beauty of the two, at least to his thinking. She had wide-set eyes and that bright smile that curved into two pert dimples.
It was a pity she was part loon.
“Contrary to what the British might think, they don’t rule the world, much less the seas,” Harrak opined.
“Mmm.” Leo watched as Lady Eulalie approached Eliza now with another Weslorian in tow. Eulalie Gaspar was an interesting woman, too, wasn’t she? She seemed pleasant, and sensible enough about the reality of the situation they’d been thrust into. And yet he felt a current of something underneath her smile that made him uncomfortable. The odd sensation one gets when someone is laughing behind one’s back. But it was unreasonable to think she had any impression of him at all, really—he’d only met her last night, had one dance with her.
Did she know what was said of her father? Surely not. Hopefully not. But what if she did?
All right, he was allowing his anxiety pull him into delusional thinking. There was nothing there, behind his back or otherwise. Eulalie was as rattled as he was about this proposed match between them, that was all.
“Will you speak to the king, then?” Harrak asked.
Leo hadn’t heard a word the man had said. “Je, of course.” Another white lie to add to the stacks of them he’d told through the years. Yes, of course I can help you. Yes, whatever you need. Yes, I will bring it to the king’s attention straight away.
Harrak smiled. “Thank you, Your Highness. Thank you.”
Leo smiled thinly and excused himself. People always assumed he had influence in this kingdom, when in fact he had none. If he were to mention to his father that British imperialism was not appreciated the world over, his father would think he’d lost his mind.
“Leo?”
Leo stopped midstride and turned around to the sound of his brother’s voice. Bas was grinning. “Bloody hell, Bas,” Leo said with a chuckle. “Have you stopped smiling since your wedding?”
“I have not,” he said jovially. “I was just off to fetch my lovely bride and have this evening over and done. I won’t lie, Leo—I’m impatient for Tannymeade.”
“God help you, you’re randy.”
“Impressively so,” Bas said with a wink.
“I envy you,” Leo said. “Have you seen the woman who will be my wife?”
“Eulalie?” Bas shrugged. “She’s handsome enough.”
She was handsome, but she lacked the charm that came to Eliza quite naturally.
“Why the long face, brother? Did you expect your future bride to be suitable in mien and compatible in all ways?” Bas teased him. “Do you recall what you used to say to me?”
Leo shook his head.
“Get her, bed her, put a child in her and be on your way.”
Leo winced. He had indeed said that, and more than once. It was easy advice to give, but it was not easy advice to follow.
Bas clapped him on the shoulder. “Come, lad,” he said. “Let’s have this supper done so I can take my wife to bed.”
“My God,” Leo complained. Bas laughed.
They joined the ladies across the room. Eliza saw them first, and her smile flashed brilliantly warm. “My darling! Oh my, I still can’t believe I can say that before everyone,” Eliza said brightly. “Have you met the Duke of Sonderstein? He was just telling us that in Wesloria there is an ancient dial of stones that aligns with the stars and the moon.”
“Your Highness,” the duke said politely as Lady Eulalie curtsied. Lady Caroline curtsied, too, but Leo noticed she was smiling. Always that incandescent smile of hers, cast at him as if they shared a secret.
“May I offer my personal felicitations on the occasion of your marriage?” Sonderstein asked. “You are a fortunate man indeed to be surrounded by such beauty.”
“I am indeed,” Bas agreed.
“My good fortune came in the pleasure of the Alucian country dance with Lady Caroline,” the old man continued, then did a little swinging of the elbows in a manner that Leo guessed was to mimic dancing.
Lady Caroline smiled pertly at Sonderstein, and said, with a sidelong look to Leo, “His Grace very kindly said my steps were excellent.”
“Oh, indeed, they were,” the duke avowed. “I have rarely danced with such graceful a dancer.”
“Were it not for Caroline’s instruction, I wouldn’t have danced at all,” Eliza said.
“Oh dear, I can’t claim credit for your dancing,” Lady Caroline said, and she and Eliza laughed roundly.
“Lady Caroline, you’re bound for England soon, are you not?” Lady Eulalie asked abruptly.
“Pardon? Oh, yes! We set sail on the morrow. And you?”
“I’m not due to leave for several days yet. My father has some rather important business to finish with the king.” She smiled slyly at Leo.
Fingers of ice raced down his spine. He didn’t care for her insinuation. If there was an announcement to be made about him, he’d damn well make it himself. He kept his expression neutral and looked away from the group.
“Should be fine sailing weather,” the old duke opined.
“Aren’t you returning to England as well, Leopold?” Eliza asked.
“As it happens. I sail tomorrow evening.”
Lady Caroline gasped loudly. “So do I! What a coincidence! What a delight to share a ship with you, Highness. I am very good at whist, sir, I’ll warn you now.”
“Oh, Caro... I think His Highness will be on a different ship,” Eliza said with a slight wince.
“Really? Are there so many ships sailing to England from Helenamar on the same day?” Lady Caroline asked jovially. “An entire fleet, is it?”
“Well, no,” Eliza said. “But I think there is a special ship for, ah...for the royal family?”
Lady Eulalie coughed. She looked as if she was choking on a laugh.
“Oh.” Lady Caroline seemed to take that in, then suddenly smiled again so brightly that Leo was a little amazed by it—she was bold as brass and hard to ruffle. “Of course you’ll need a special ship, Your Highness!” she said. “However could I think differently? I’m such a cake about these things.”
“You’re not a cake, Caro,” Bas said. “It’s a mistake anyone might make.”
“Perhaps not everyone,” Lady Eulalie murmured, and smiled as she toyed with the earring dangling from her lobe. But Leo could see her smile was not one of shared amusement. It was the sort of smile people used on witless children.
“Why should you know how ships come and go?” Eliza added charitably. “It’s not the sort of education that is required of proper ladies.” She and Lady Caroline laughed again. They seemed to have their own unique sense of humor.
“Your brother will miss you terribly,” Eliza said to Leopold. “And so will I, quite honestly. You’ve been so very helpful to me.”
“It’s been my pleasure,” he said sincerely. He truly had come to adore Eliza.
He noticed that Lady Caroline was smiling at him as if he’d directed his comment to her. Her smile was so dazzling that he realized he might have noticed it a moment too long. He quickly shifted his gaze to Eliza. “I’ll return to Alucia soon enough, once I’ve wrapped up my affairs in England,” he assured her. He had no idea what that meant, but it seemed to appease everyone when he said it. “I hope to return to the joyous news of a future arrival of a niece or nephew.”
“Ha! Ha ha!” Eliza laughed hysterically.
“By God’s grace,” Lady Eulalie agreed.
“When the time is right,” Bas said.
“Ah, there he is,” the duke said, looking over Lady Eulalie’s shoulder. “The Weslorian prime minister has arrived. If we may have your leave, Your Highness?” he asked, turning to Bas. At Bas’s nod, the old duke offered his arm to Lady Eulalie, and the two of them departed. Bas sighed with relief. “Now that the prime minister has deigned to join us, we might dine. I’m famished.”
“Should we assemble the promenade?” Eliza asked. “Lord help me, I’ve already forgotten the order—”
“Don’t trouble yourself, darling,” Bas said. “We’ll go in informally and ask everyone to find places. Leo, you’ll escort Caro, will you?” He turned around and called for the butler. “Jando? Jando!” He waved the butler to him.
Leo glanced at Lady Caroline. She frowned.
“Jando, let them all proceed and find their places. Dinner is served.” He presented his arm to Eliza. “The duchess first, of course.”
With another glorious smile, Eliza put her hand on Bas’s arm and they walked away, completely lost in each other.
Leo must have sighed when he offered his arm to Lady Caroline, because her frown deepened.
“What?” she demanded crossly. “It wasn’t my suggestion. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You needn’t say a word, as your displeasure is plainly written on your face. Really, why do you hate me?” she demanded as she put her hand on his arm.
He arched a brow with surprise. “There is nothing plainly written on my face but the tedium of another wedding celebration. And I don’t hate you—how could I? I don’t know you. Well,” he said after a slight hesitation. “I suppose I do know you now, don’t I? You’ve made certain of it.”
“I understand that the concept of cordiality doesn’t come easy to you, Highness, but many of us who don’t reside in palaces practice it frequently.”
“Cordiality? Is that what you call it?”
“I call it any number of things. Civility. Manners. Conduct becoming a polite society. Friends, even, as we are practically related by marriage now. You should look them all up in your palace manual of etiquette. I think you will find some illuminating entries under ‘enviable traits of the common folk.’”
He snorted his opinion. “And you may find some entries worth your perusal under ‘questionable traits of the common folk,’ madam, and particularly, the rules of engagement with royalty.”
She gaped at him. “Are you accusing me of lacking decorum?”
“I am indeed. Will you walk?”
Caroline moved her feet. “Once again, your grasp of social conduct confounds me! You confuse effortless congeniality with some broken rule of etiquette that has been quite forgotten by the world at large. I do not lack decorum, sir, but I swear on Beck’s life you could very well push me to it.”
“Ack, but you are a bloody obstinate woman, Lady Caroline. On my life, I can think of no other who could react so vainly to a proper chastisement. It’s a wonder your brother hasn’t told you.”
“Ha! What makes you think he hasn’t told me so? He is as insufferably superior as you, which I would think you might have noticed, given that your feathers have flocked together with his. I’d rather be vain than ill-mannered like you.”
He nearly choked on that. “Ill-mannered? Your pride astonishes me at every turn! I am unaccustomed to being so completely contradicted every time I speak. Do you treat every gentleman of your acquaintance in this manner, or do you reserve this behavior solely for princes?”
Lady Caroline’s eyes turned a shade of green that he would have described as blistering, had it been possible for lovely green eyes to be blistering. “Well, I would ask the same of you, Your Highness—do you treat every lady in your acquaintance with such disdain? I am proud! Why should I not be proud? I’m a good friend, a caring person and I happen to be exceedingly personable. And I’m an excellent dressmaker, too! So yes, I am proud. Aren’t you proud of you?”
They had reached the dining room, and he turned to face her. They were standing only inches apart, and her eyes continued to blaze just as hotly as the fire in his chest. She was defiant and beautiful and, bloody hell, he felt a twinge in his groin that was almost as strong as the thud at his temple.
“Am I not demure enough for your liking? Do you find it difficult to establish friendships? Do you think women should be seen and not heard?”
Inexplicably, his gaze dipped to her mouth and her full, succulent lips. And there his gaze lingered a fraction of a moment too long, much like it had lingered on her smile in the salon. He made himself lift his eyes. “Perhaps I have gone about this all wrong. If I may, Lady Caroline, allow me to ask you, as a gentleman and a prince, to stop perpetuating the fantasy of some sort of friendship between us. If it pleases you, you may consider us acquainted.”
Those lush lips parted slightly with the sharp draw of her breath. Her eyes narrowed. “Why, thank you for clarifying that we are not quite friends, as that assumption, apparently, is a stunning lack of decorum. You are so generous to allow me to consider us acquainted. I cannot begin to describe the leaps of joy my heart is taking just now. What I can say is that I have never in my life been treated so abominably. You may be a prince, sir, but you are no gentleman.” And with that, she took a long look at his mouth with such intensity that he thought for a split second she might throw all caution to the wind and kiss him.
And for a split second, he eagerly prepared himself for the possibility.
Lady Caroline didn’t kiss him. She turned on her heel and flounced away.
He watched her march across the room, find her seat and grip the back of her chair with both hands. When she realized that guests weren’t to be seated just yet, she glanced up and caught his gaze. She gave a shake of her head and turned away from him.
Leo didn’t know if he should be royally offended.
Or inspired.
CHAPTER EIGHT
London, England
Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. A particular lady who notoriously enjoys the company of older gentlemen has just returned from a wedding in Alucia. It is whispered that her delight in having the attention of an Alucian gentleman in his prime has found her husband’s heart turned cold against her, and she’s been sent to their home in Kent so that she may contemplate her bad behavior.
At a recent supper party of four and twenty souls, Lady Elizabeth Constantinople wore a gown of green silk in two tiers, each tier ending with a wide curve of Belgian lace that complemented the thinner bands of lace on the bodice and sleeves. The effect was serene, and we predict the style will be often replicated by ladies in the autumn.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
A WEEK HAD passed since Caroline had arrived home from Alucia. The voyage had been brutal, as the seas were unusually rough and Caroline sick for days. Had it not been for Hollis’s attention, she was convinced she might now be dead. Even Beck had seemed concerned she might depart this life prematurely—she had a hazy memory of her brother entering the cabin and bending over her, his hand tenderly on her forehead, urging her to rally. “I would be terribly displeased if you were to die like this.”
“Would you like a more dramatic demise?” Hollis had asked as she’d pushed him out of the cabin.
Caroline thought she was fully recovered from her seasickness by the time they reached London. The weakness that lingered was simply fatigue. After all, she’d hardly eaten a thing in the last week, and her skirts hung loosely on her. And how glad she was to be free of the Alucian train! She had many ideas how to reinvent that train into something a bit more practical to wear.
She’d spent the week unpacking and sleeping longer than normal. In the last day or two, she’d felt as if she’d taken cold. Last night at supper, when Beck asked her why she didn’t eat, she said she wasn’t hungry, and that he should keep an eye on his own plate. She didn’t know why she was so cross with him. With everything, really. Even her longtime lady’s maid, Martha, annoyed her, bustling about her room, preparing her toilette before bed. “Leave me, Martha!” she’d cried dramatically as she climbed onto her bed, still fully dressed. “I need quiet.”
The next day, she felt even worse. She sent word to Beck through Martha that she’d had a late tea—true—and that she wasn’t hungry for supper. Also true. But she hadn’t eaten at tea, either. Her head was pounding and her stomach churning. After a few miserable hours of that, she decided she ought to pour something scalding down her burning throat. She could have quite easily used the bellpull, but she’d now developed the strange fear that after her intense bout of seasickness, and now this cold, her legs might atrophy altogether and she’d be bedridden all her life and would never again dance a waltz. So she’d gamely forced herself out of bed and pulled a dressing gown around her. She used a handkerchief to dab at her runny nose and slowly made her way downstairs. She was alarmed by how dizzy she felt and how useless her legs were already beginning to feel, thus confirming her fears of utter demise.
Just at the top of the grand staircase to the lower floors, she heard voices coming from the salon. Not just voices, but raucous laughter. How many were in that salon? It sounded like dozens. While she’d been wasting away upstairs, Beck had brought his friends to enjoy an evening of debauchery. She ought to die, just to spite him.
Caroline backtracked to the servants’ stairs and slowly made her way down with the assistance of the wall. On the main floor, she padded in the opposite direction from the salon, dabbing at her leaky nose. But when she turned into the hall that led to the kitchen, she spotted a man and a woman in the shadows. Her first thought was that she must be hallucinating. It was not Beck’s habit to consort with the maids or to bring women into their home. She paused. She squinted. That was indeed a man with his back to her. But that man was not Beck. And there was indeed someone else, too, a woman, one considerably smaller than the man.
The pair was standing with their shoulders to a wall, facing each other. How dare they carry on like this in the halls of this house? They were carrying on, weren’t they? Or were they? They didn’t seem to be kissing, which, frankly, is what she’d be doing if she was so inclined to meet a gentleman in the darkened hallway of someone’s house. What other possible explanation could there be? She took another step closer, steadying herself with a hand to the wall. They were whispering. Was it whispers of love? She’d like to hear that.
Perhaps it was one of the new maids. Beck had recently hired two from Lord Hill, who had decamped to the country with a vow to never return to London until the air was cleared of smoke and soot. Beck said he’d never return, then.
Caroline crept closer. It wasn’t the new groom. The man was too tall. That left only one possibility—one of Beck’s wretched friends. But who was he cavorting with? Caroline crept closer still, so close that she could almost reach out and touch the tail of the man’s coat. But then she was suddenly overcome with a violent sneeze at such velocity that she could not possibly prevent it. That bell-clanging sneeze was followed by two more. By the time she had stopped sneezing, the woman had disappeared, and the man had turned around to face her, his legs braced as if prepared to fight.
Caroline dabbed her handkerchief at her nose and looked at the man in the dimly lit hallway. Her belly dipped—good God, it was him. The Arse of Alucia. “You,” she said dramatically.
“Also you.” He relaxed, and leaned against the wall again, his arms folded over his chest. “Well, well, here you are, then, Lady Caroline. I was under the happy impression that you’d gone out for the evening.”
“Well, that was wishful thinking.” She sneezed again. “You’re like a very bad dream following me about. Where is your paramour?” she asked, craning her neck to look.
“Not a paramour,” he said. “A friend.”
“Ha! I may be ill, sir,” she said, pointing at him, “but I am no fool.”
“I never said you were a fool. I said you were a bother.”
Caroline was winding up to admonish him for cavorting with a servant, but his last statement gave her pause. “When did you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. If I didn’t say it aloud, I certainly thought it.” He smiled.
It was the first time he’d actually smiled at her—truly smiled at her...unless Beck was standing behind her and she didn’t know it. But Caroline was fairly confident they were the only two in this hallway, and the effect of that smile made her feel even dizzier. Normally, she would have taken advantage of his smile to charm the wits from him. “In consideration of the source, I will take that as a delightful compliment.”
He stepped closer, and Caroline suddenly remembered her state of existence—the dressing gown, the unkempt hair, the puffy eyes and red nose. No doubt her breath smelled atrocious, too. Mortified, she stepped back and away from him, and smacked into the wall. Funny, she had not sensed the wall at her back.
This was not how she wanted to look when she put the man in his place. It was always best to dress a man down when one was dressed all the way up. She needed her hair to be curled, to be clothed in one of the beautiful gowns she’d made for the trip to Alucia, embellished within an inch of its life. But the prince leaned forward all the same, squinting at her. “Lady Caroline...you look awful.”
“How dare you,” she said weakly.
“Have you seen a doctor?”
She gathered her dressing gown around her. “I don’t require a doctor.”
“You look like you’re in desperate need of one to me.”
She wouldn’t mind discussing her theory of the potential for permanently losing the use of her legs with a qualified medical professional, but she would save that for another time. “Don’t try to divert my attention, sir. What are you doing in this hall?”
“Hawke!” he suddenly shouted, startling her. He put his hand on her arm as if to steady her.
She looked down at his arm. “What in blazes are you doing?”
“You’re wobbling. Hawke!” he shouted again, and this time caught her by the elbow.
“I beg your pardon!” She looked up at him and winced at the blinding pain behind her eyes. She was tall, but he was a head taller than her and twice as broad. He dwarfed her. Or was she shrinking? She felt as if she were shrinking. She must be shrinking because he now looked rather concerned. She looked down again and realized he had moved her around so that she was propped fully against the wall. She wasn’t actually shrinking, but she was scarcely holding herself up.
“Whoa,” he said, and caught her with one arm around her waist.
“What is happening?” She was terribly light-headed. Everything seemed so wavy.
She heard a door open behind her, and then the familiar stride of her brother coming down the hall, the bounce of light from the candelabra he carried. “What is it?” he asked as he reached them, and looked down at Caroline. He recoiled with a gasp. “Good God, you look like death.”
“Well, thank you, everyone, but I didn’t have time to dress.”
“Where is Martha?” he demanded. He put his arm around her and shoved the candelabra at the prince. “Come on, then, back to bed.”
“I think she should have a doctor,” the prince said, and held the candelabra aloft so that Beck could lean in and examine her. “She looks a bit green, doesn’t she?”
“Disturbingly green. Martha? Martha!” Beck bellowed. He pressed a hand to her cheek. “God help me, you’re on fire!”
“Beck! You’re hurting my ears,” Caroline said, wincing. Everything about her hurt.
“Do you need help?” the prince asked, and Caroline wasn’t sure who, exactly, he was addressing.
“No,” she said at the very moment Beck also said no. But Beck added a gracious, “Thank you, I can manage.” He dipped down and picked Caroline up before she knew what was happening and began to march along the hallway.
“I dropped my handkerchief,” Caroline protested. “And what of my soup?”
“I employ a host of servants so that someone may bring you soup on occasions like this,” Beck said as he huffed along. “Why did you not call one? Why did you not call me?”
“You wouldn’t have come. You’ve been out with your friends. Why did you bring dozens of them?”
“What are you talking about? There are four of us to dine, that’s all,” Beck said as he started his ascent of the stairs.
“But why him, Beck?” she moaned, and pressed her head to his shoulder.
Beck paused on the first landing to catch his breath. “Lord, but you’re heavier than you look. Why him who?” he asked through a pant.
“The Arse of Alucia, that’s who.”
Somewhere, someone coughed lightly.
“For heaven’s sake, Caro. Why didn’t you tell me you were so ill?”
“I’m not so ill,” she said, but could feel the heaviness of her eyelids.
“Shall I take over?”
Caroline’s lids flew open. He’d had the audacity to follow them up the stairs? Worse, had he heard her complaining about him to Beck?
“I’ve got her,” Beck said, and continued his march, bouncing Caroline along as he went.
“That’s quite a fever,” another man said.
Caroline recognized the voice of Robert Ladley, the Earl of Montford. As if this moment could possibly be any worse, now there were three of them gathered. “Beck,” she pleaded.
“This way,” Beck said.
By the sound of it, they were followed by a small army. Caroline buried her face in Beck’s shoulder again so she’d not have to look at the Arse of Alucia. And so he wouldn’t smell her breath or see how parched her lips were. This was, without a doubt, the height of humiliation, particularly as she took such great pride in her looks.
Beck opened the door to her room and strode to her bed, depositing her there, then pulling the cover over her. Caroline dared not look around her. But then she did, and no less than four men were staring down at her with various expressions of concern and horror. It was worse than she thought.
“I’ll fetch Dr. Callaway, shall I?” Montford asked.
“I think you ought,” the prince said, and touched the back of his hand to Caroline’s cheek without asking her permission. “She is burning with fever.”
“All of you, out,” Beck commanded. “I’ll not have her infect you.”
“I’ll go,” Montford offered.
“I’ll go with you,” said Sir Charles Martin.
“Martha! Where have you been?” Beck said gruffly as Martha came into view. “Why wasn’t I informed she was so ill?”
“Oh dear God,” Caroline said, and rolled onto her side, away from the spectacle.
“I didn’t know, my lord,” Martha said, and sat on the edge of Caroline’s bed, smoothing back her hair. “She was sleeping when last I looked in on her.”
Caroline grabbed Martha’s hand and held on for dear life. “Make them go,” she whispered.
Martha stood up and said, “Allow me to tend her.”
“Yes, well, see that you do,” Beck said.
Caroline didn’t know how Martha managed it, but she felt the room clear of muttering men. A moment later, Martha returned to her side. “I’ll get a compress,” she said soothingly. She disappeared again. Caroline’s eyes closed, but she felt she was not alone and opened her eyes to see the Arse of Alucia looming over her.
He touched a hand to her cheek and winced. “I’ve never seen you so quiet.”
Caroline wanted to roll her eyes, but they hurt. “I’ve never seen you so sober,” she muttered.
He smiled again, his blue eyes shining with delight.
“Please, Your Highness, allow me to tend her,” Martha said from somewhere beyond the bed.
The prince disappeared, and Martha sat lightly next to Caroline and pressed a cold cloth to her head. “Am I dying?” Caroline asked weakly. “Did you see them all? Assembled as if they expected me to go at any moment. If I am to die, Martha, please see that I’m buried in the yellow dress with the green sprigs. I worked so hard on those bloody green sprigs and I’ll have everyone take one last look at them.”
“You’ve a fever, that’s all, milady. Men are generally unduly alarmed when confronted with illness and all matters female. Pay no mind to their histrionics.”
“Thank you, Martha,” she said with a sigh. “Will you have someone bring me soup?” she mumbled, but could feel herself falling down that hole of dead sleep.
“Yes, miss,” Martha said from someplace far above her.
The weight on her bed lifted, and Caroline heard Martha quietly go into her dressing room. She rallied enough to push herself up and looked across the room to the mirror at her vanity. “Oh my Lord,” she whispered, and fell back against the pillows. Of all the days for that bloody prince to show up.
Caroline tucked a pillow up under her head and was sliding away again when the door swung open violently and Beck appeared at her bedside. He frowned at her. “You have worried me terribly,” he said accusingly.
“Are you friends with him now? Fast friends?” she asked. “You and Leopold?”
“Are you still nattering on about that? You must be delirious. To begin, he is His Royal Highness to you. And what does it matter if he is my friend?”
“It’s awful,” she whimpered. The worst of it was that her brother would never understand how disloyal he was being to her by befriending that man.
Beck sat on the edge of her bed and roughly caressed her damp head. “Dr. Calloway is being summoned,” he said softly. “Now see here, Caro, you mustn’t give me a fright like this. You really must mend yourself. We’ve already been through this, on the ship.”
Caroline didn’t care about mending herself now since those gentlemen had seen her in such a dilapidated state.
Martha appeared with a basin and a cloth, and Beck stood up so that Martha could take his place.
“You really must endeavor to mend yourself, Caro,” he added uncertainly.
With her back to Beck, Martha rolled her eyes.
Beck leaned over Martha, put his hand on Caroline’s leg and squeezed softly. “The house would be quite empty without you.”
“I won’t die, Beck. How could I? You’d be utterly lost without me,” she said as her eyes slid closed. “Now will you send everyone away? And I do mean everyone. I should not like to see him again.”
“She’s delirious,” Beck said, his voice fading. “She doesn’t know what she is saying.”
Oh, Caroline knew very well what she was saying, but she didn’t have the strength to explain it.
CHAPTER NINE
A soiree was hosted by the venerable Lord Russell, our new prime minister, to celebrate his party’s victory. The gathering included their Lordships Hill, Eversley and Wellington, as well as His Royal Highness Prince Leopold. Noticeably absent from the celebration was Lady Russell, who has not been seen much about since her return from Alucia. Rumor has it that the new prime minister’s celebration went on until the bright light of the following day, at which time several of the guests were seen departing the mansion, with perhaps the notable exception of a prince, who was said to have gone missing just after midnight. Speculation is that he was not alone when he went.
Lady Caroline Hawke, a perennial guest at such gatherings as this, was not on hand, as she recovers from an illness brought on by bad seas and poor London air.
Ladies, a concoction of one part arsenic to every two parts honey will soothe the sorest of throats and fevers.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
LEO TOSSED THE Honeycutt’s Gazette aside, and a hotel footman deftly stepped in to pick it up from the table. Leo scarcely noticed him, as the servants at the Clarendon Hotel had been trained to be almost invisible.
Leo had taken half a floor at the hotel on Bond Street, noted for its catering to aristocrats and dignitaries. His father preferred his second son to reside in a house, preferably with an Alucian ally, but Leo preferred the hotel. It was in the heart of London, and there was enough room for his staff, which included his palace guards, Kadro and Artur, his valet, Freddar, who doubled as a houseman in Leo’s private suite of rooms, and his private secretary, Josef Pistol. It was Josef who kept his ear to the ground around town and who’d brought him Honeycutt’s Gazette this morning.
Josef was sitting with Leo now in the library, on armchairs covered in rich leather and stuffed within an inch of exploding. They’d been served tea, and Josef was making quick, efficient notes about the week ahead in his leather-bound journal while Leo drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair, mulling over the bit of gossip from the gazette. The news was more than a week old, and yet, it still rankled Leo.
“Will you be calling on Lord Hawke today, Highness?” Josef asked as he jotted a note.
Leo wondered what else Josef wrote in that journal, always dashing off something across the page. “Yes, presently. Who watches me so closely, do you suspect?” he asked, gesturing in the direction he’d tossed the gazette.
“All of London,” Josef said blandly, as if he’d had to remind Leo of this several times over.
Obviously, Leo knew that his coming and going was noted and reported in morning papers. He was a prince and therefore a grand prize in the marriage mart. And in more than one country. He wasn’t surprised that it was widely known he’d been a guest at Lord Russell’s home. But what he did not expect was that anyone, besides Russell himself, would know how he’d slipped out that evening. He’d taken such care of it, too, asking the butler if he could use a service door. Evidently, he was not very good at skulking about.
Frankly, Leo was discovering that the only thing he was even passably competent at was enjoying himself. But when it came to serious matters, he was utterly inept. In other words, his worst fear was being confirmed—he was rather useless. This had been proven to him over the last fortnight, when, in an effort to at least educate himself about what Lysander had told him, he’d blundered through every turn.
“The carriage will arrive at half past two, Your Highness,” Josef said, and closed his notebook. “Shall I send someone to fetch flowers?”
“Flowers?” Leo asked. He was still thinking of the on-dit, of that night at the Russell house.
“For Lady Caroline.”
“Oh. Je, of course.” Hawke had only rarely left his home during the course of his sister’s illness. Leo had gone round every day, not only because he considered Hawke a friend, but because he needed desperately to speak to Hawke’s new chambermaid again, and that, he was discovering, was a hell of a lot easier said than done.
It galled him that he was so inept that he couldn’t even manage a meeting with a maid. He had made three attempts to find her, and just when he thought he had, Lady Caroline had stumbled upon them, swaying from side to side with a ghostly look about her. Everything about her looked gray...except her remarkable green eyes, which had seemed more incandescent than ever.
Since the night she’d thwarted him by knocking on death’s door, Leo had tried in vain to speak to the Hawke maid, but even as Lady Caroline lay bedridden, she was making that impossible. Every time he called at the house on Upper Brook Street, he felt obliged to sit with Hawke, who fretted like an old woman over his sister, even though the doctor had told him she ought to recover completely. And still, Leo could not manage to talk his way out of that study. Every excuse he offered—to fetch water for Hawke, for example—would prompt Hawke to wave his hand and yank on the bellpull. Or when Leo insisted he needed a chamber pot, Hawke pointed to one in the corner.
Leo was continually hampered by his lack of imagination and Hawke’s attention to detail.
Really, how did anyone expect he would know what to do? All he knew was that the woman he reluctantly searched for had once been a maid in the home of Lord Hill. That, and her name—Ann Marble—was all he could recall of what Lysander had told him in the palace garden.
Except that she wasn’t employed by Hill. By some hook or crook, she’d moved her employment to Lord Hawke’s home, of all places.
Naturally, Leo didn’t know that when he’d worked so hard to gain an invitation to Lord Hill’s home. He was only marginally acquainted with the man, having met him a time or two at the gentlemen’s club he frequented and at formal suppers here and there. He’d never had a proper conversation with him that he could recall. It had required a bit of thinking on Leo’s part, but he’d finally come up with an idea to connive an invitation to the man’s home. He’d thought himself rather clever, too.
“Your Highness?” Josef prodded him.
“Yes, flowers,” Leo said, suddenly remembering himself. “Something bright and cheerful.” God knew the Hawke household needed it. “And some whisky for Hawke. Although I think perhaps the time has come that he put down the bottle.” He’d passed more than a few hours with Hawke while he numbed his fears with whisky.
Josef bowed crisply. “If I may have your leave?”
Leo sighed. “If you’re not going to engage in a bit of tittle-tattle with me, then go about your business,” he said, waving him away. Josef went out. He never engaged in tittle-tattle, that one.
Leo had an hour before the carriage would fetch him and carry him to Hawke’s house, and this time, apparently, he’d be laden with gifts.
More false pretense.
That’s the manner in which he’d called on Hill—with much false pretense. Oh, but he’d racked his brain on what to say to Hill to get his invitation. And then, miraculously, he’d recalled taking part in a hunt one rainy autumn in Sussex. Hill had been there, too, hadn’t he? Yes, Leo determined, he had, as his family seat was nearby. Leo was certain that Hill had been present when their hunt party had stopped at a Herstmonceux Castle ruin to rest the horses. Hill had been there.
But how to use this memory to approach Hill? Leo had thought back to the many ways people had conspired to make his acquaintance over the years. Who knew there would be a lesson in it? But there was, and he’d put himself at a table with Lord Hill at the gentlemen’s club one day and asked if he recalled the abandoned castle they’d rode past during the hunt a few years ago.
“Of course I remember it,” Hill had said.
“Is it for sale?” Leo asked.
Hill had stared at him with confusion. “For sale? That pile of rubble?”
“It has walls yet,” Leo reminded him. “I have in mind to restore it.”
“Restore it!” Hill had laughed. “It would cost a king’s ransom to restore it.”
Leo had shrugged. “A bit of a hobby. Can you show it to me again?”
Hill had grinned. “Well, Highness, I suppose that you, of all people, would have that king’s ransom. Be forewarned—you’ll spend every pence. The wood’s surely all rotted and the stone crumbling from the damp. Aye, come to call in Sussex. The owners are my neighbors to the east. I’ll speak with them and determine their inclination to sell, if you like.”
“I would be in your debt,” Leo had said.
A day later, the invitation to Sussex had arrived, and Leo had been very pleased with himself. Perhaps he was cleverer than he’d understood. When he entered the home of Lord Hill in Sussex, it was with full confidence, which he carried with him squarely in his puffed-up chest until the moment he’d asked a footman if Miss Ann Marble could be brought round upon his departure.
“Miss Marble is no longer employed here, Your Highness. She’s taken a position with Lord Russell.”
That knocked the smile from Leo’s face. That was not supposed to have happened. He’d gained his way into Hill’s house, and she was to be here, dammit! Leo had not thought once about the possibility she would not be where Lysander had said she would be.
“Ah. Well, then,” he said dumbly.
“Shall I send a messen—”
“No. Not necessary, not at all. Thank you.” Leo had forced himself to smile and then strode away from that footman.
To add insult to that injury, Leo discovered he did not have a very good reason to lose interest in the castle now that Lord Hill had gone to considerable lengths to research it for him. He’d left that afternoon with the uneasy feeling he’d just bought himself an old ruin.
He should have stopped then, should have plainly recognized that he was no match for this dilemma. It wasn’t as if he could move around London unnoticed.
He glanced disparagingly at the offending gazette the footman had laid on the table with the other morning papers.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop, because his bloody conscience, which had suddenly decided to make an appearance, wouldn’t allow it. The five names in his pocket would not allow it. His dirty little list of five names he could not forget: Nina, Isidora, Eowyn, Jacleen, Rasa.
They were the names of Weslorian women who’d been sold into slavery. Or worse. Leo tried not to think about the worst of it.
This was what Lysander had wanted so desperately to tell him in the palace gardens. He’d wanted to explain to Leo that powerful, rich men were working together to purchase young women from poor families and sell them to other powerful men with influence in foreign and trade policy. They were bartering living, breathing human beings for political favor.
Leo was so alarmed when Lysander had told him that he’d not wanted to hear it. “Why are you telling me?” he’d demanded of Lysander, feeling desperate to unhear it. “I can’t help you.”
Lysander’s steady smile was eerie. “On the contrary, Highness, you may very well be the only person who can help me.”
But Leo was shaking his head before Lysander finished speaking. “I will put you before whomever you must speak to in order to end this practice, sir, but I can’t help you. I am to England on the morrow.” Leo could recall pacing that garden, wishing desperately he was already on a ship, away from such wretched tales, away from ceremony, away from his place as a prince in his country.
But Lysander would not let him flee so easily. “One of the men involved is an Alucian lord who has made a fortune developing ironworks here, in Alucia. You might have seen the chimneys just outside Helenamar. You may be familiar with the gentleman, Highness, as he accompanied your brother to England to advise him on the trade agreement. Lord Vinters?”
Leo had stopped in his tracks. Marcellus Vinters was a trusted adviser to his father.
“He has strong ties to England and has arranged to bring British advancements to his business. He is the broker, so to speak.”
“The broker,” Leo had repeated, not understanding.
“The Weslorians want to share in the advancements. This arrangement is a simple commodity exchange—the Weslorian provides the girls. Lord Vinters trades them for the advancements and favorable trade terms for the Weslorians.”
That meant, then, that Vinters was working against the interests of Alucia. It had been almost more than Leo could absorb, but then Lysander had said the thing that changed everything. “The Weslorian broker is the Duke of Brondeny.”
Leo’s stomach had dropped at the mention of Lady Eulalie’s father. That was impossible. His dealings would have been thoroughly scrutinized by the Alucians. They would not risk a scandal like this if Leo was to marry his daughter. Which meant his father didn’t know about the scheme? “That’s impossible. Vinters is a close confidant of my father. He would not negotiate trade for Wesloria. He would not trade in slavery.”
“You know as well as I that industrialization depends on iron,” Lysander had said calmly. “To industrialize is to survive, to be strong. Wesloria must industrialize, and they are willing to pay the price.”
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