An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  He slanted me an odd look. “Tell me that is why you want to do this, and I will accept the lie. But at least be honest with yourself. There is nothing about Alice Baker-Greene’s death that is drawing you into this particular scheme. You have ghosts of your own to exorcise that have nothing to do with her.”

  It was an unkind observation, but it was not wrong, I reflected as he went to open the door. As expected, Maximilian was hovering just outside and he tumbled into the room, followed hard by the baroness and the chancellor.

  The chancellor’s expression was watchful while the baroness’s was one of naked hope.

  “Very well,” I told them. “I will do it. But the same terms as last night—I must be accompanied by Mr. Templeton-Vane, and not merely as my guard,” I stipulated. “He must be acknowledged as a member of the delegation and seated at the formal supper.”

  To my surprise, they agreed at once, and I felt a rush of emotion. I was going to a banquet at Windsor Castle—home of my grandmother, the queen. And whether that emotion was fear or exhilaration, I could not tell.

  * * *

  • • •

  After a lengthy lesson on royal etiquette from the baroness, Stoker and I were given a brief respite. Stoker complained of hunger and went to the room put aside for his use with the packet of honeycomb he kept in his coat whilst I rubbed my aching temples and picked up a discarded copy of the Weekly Portent that someone had stuffed beneath the sofa cushion. I could not imagine any member of the entourage taking an interest in such a periodical; it was a lurid little publication even more outrageous than the Daily Harbinger. I wondered if one of the maids had been reading it and hidden it away lest she be discovered shirking her duties.

  exclusive interview with princess’s potential betrothed, royal man of action, shouted the headline. I read the article with mounting disbelief. It was a lengthy piece on Duke Maximilian, describing the events of the previous night at the opera house and detailing how his courage and perspicacity had saved Princess Gisela from harm when a bomb had exploded near her. The piece was stickily sentimental and flattering in the extreme, cataloging his virtues as a man of the people, accomplished and yet never lacking the common touch. There was a formal photograph of him in uniform and two more in hunting garb and evening dress. He presented a perfect image of a man of the world, destined for greatness. He was quoted as saying that he was a devoted lover of his country with no greater wish than to serve the Alpenwald by supporting the princess. He had many flattering things to say about England and the continued bonds between our countries, and the article ended with an encomium of praise so extreme I blushed for the author. The last lines were a direct appeal to the princess to accept the duke’s hand in marriage and give the Alpenwald the prince it so richly deserved.

  I nearly tossed the newspaper aside in disgust. The duke had not “flung himself on the perpetrator with complete disregard for his own personal safety” while “shielding the princess from harm with his own muscular form.” And he had certainly not “apprehended the villain single-handedly before turning him over to the Metropolitan Police.” Every other newspaper in the country reported the fact that the bomb thrower had not been identified much less apprehended, and a dozen different descriptions had been circulated—everything from a nut seller to a dowager duchess had allegedly hurled the explosive.

  Just then my gaze went to the byline and I caught my breath, blinking hard. J. J. Butterworth.

  I took the newspaper and hurried to find Stoker, running him to ground in the small bedchamber put at his disposal. He was reading a French novel and contentedly consuming the better part of the entire packet of honeycomb, happy as the proverbial clam. I thrust the newspaper into his sticky grasp.

  “J. J. has lied to us,” I proclaimed in a state of high dudgeon. “She indicated she was here in order to write a story about the princess, and yet she must have already seen Maximilian and interviewed him for this piece to run in today’s newspaper.”

  He considered this a moment. “More to the point, how did she happen to find him when the chancellor and the baroness did not even realize he was in London?”

  “Read the last paragraph,” I instructed.

  He skimmed it, his brows rising heavenwards as he did so. “Christ and his sleeping saints, do you realize what this means?”

  “It means,” I said grimly, “that J. J. Butterworth has a very great deal to answer for.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  We made our way to Julien’s workrooms, appearing just as he was mournfully studying a bowl of curdled custard in the hands of a tearful assistant.

  “Archie, this is not a custard. This is a crime,” he said gently. “You must always handle a custard as you would a woman. Have you ever been with a woman?”

  The youth shook his head, his face flaming.

  Julien clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Let me tell you about my first love, Angelique. What a beauty she was! Martiniquais, like me, and a sheen to her skin as if it were polished by the hand of God. She was plump like a ripe piece of fruit, and when she undressed, her thigh, just above her stocking, it moved. What is the English word? Wibble?”

  “Wobble?” the young man guessed.

  “Wobble, yes. Her thigh would wobble. You must find such a woman, Archie. And when she undresses for you, watch her thigh. Worship it,” he instructed. “And when you return, you will know how a custard should move. It should look like the round and silken thigh of a woman.” He flapped a hand at the bowl. “Now, take this away and feed it to a sad cat in the alleyway. It pains me to see it.”

  The boy fled, custard bowl in hand, and Julien sighed. “My work, it is very taxing.”

  “Clearly,” Stoker said with a grin. “How is Angelique?”

  Julien’s expression turned mournful. “Married. With nine children. And skinny now like the handle of a rake. It is enough to break the heart. What do you want, my friends?”

  We told him and he dispatched an errand boy to find J. J. I expected her to prove elusive, but she strode in, her chin lifted defiantly.

  Julien made some tactful French noises and withdrew, no doubt sensing the interview would be an unpleasant one. He gestured towards a tray of guimauves as he went, and Stoker collected a handful as J. J. seated herself with ill grace.

  “What? I have work to do, you know.”

  I held up the newspaper and she went pink to the tips of her ears. “I do not apologize for writing for the Portent.”

  “It is a rag,” I told her.

  “It pays,” she said flatly. “And that is my first byline on a front page. One more story—the right story—and it will be enough to persuade the Harbinger to take me back.”

  “What kind of story?” Stoker asked. She twitched a little but said nothing.

  “Very well,” I put in pleasantly. “We have asked you nicely. Now we will be rather less than nice. It is entirely apparent from this article that you must have written it before the explosive was thrown last night. Didn’t you?”

  She shifted in her chair and set her mouth in a mulish line before bursting out, “Oh, very well. Yes! I knew. I interviewed Maximilian early yesterday. Before he went up to the suite.”

  “How did you know he was here in London?” Stoker asked. “The other Alpenwalders were surprised by his appearance.”

  “I saw him the night before. He used the service stairs to slip up to the royal suite. I was curious as to what was afoot and he had eluded the hotel’s security. I thought if an intruder was up to no good and I could foil some sort of attack, the princess might be grateful enough to grant me an interview—a nice exclusive I could sell to one of the larger newspapers. I crept up the stairs behind him, ready to catch him red-handed, as it were. Only he did not have to break into the suite.”

  “Someone let him in?” I guessed.

  “Durand,” she said. “He opened th
e door and called him by name, that is how I deduced his identity. I hid in one of the alcoves on the stairs and after a very few minutes he returned, only this time he was not alone. He was with someone in a cloak.”

  She paused for effect, but Stoker merely shook his head. “I do not see the significance.”

  “A cloak,” she repeated. “A maid’s cloak. It was a plain, rather ugly thing that belonged to Yelena.”

  “Why shouldn’t Yelena go out? Presumably she has the occasional night off.”

  “Because it was not Yelena in the cloak,” she said, her voice dropping to a thrilled whisper. “It was the princess.”

  “How do you know?” I put in.

  “Because it was miles too short,” she replied. “The princess has half a foot on her maid, and I could clearly see the hem of her frock hanging below the hem of the cloak. It was a dark blue velvet gown I had taken away to be sponged only that morning. It was edged with Mechlin lace. I was not likely to forget it.”

  Stoker did not bother to glance at me, but he heaved a sigh. “Veronica, I can feel the emanations from your person just now. ‘Smug’ does not begin to describe them.”

  J. J. looked from one of us to the other and back again. “What is all that about?”

  “Never mind,” Stoker and I chorused. He picked up the thread of the interrogation.

  “What next?”

  “They walked around the corner and hailed a cab. I heard the address, so I followed in one of my own. I had the cabman drop me a street away and I kept to the shadows so they would not see me. They told the cabman to wait, and a short time later they got back in and went directly to St. Pancras station. The duke walked her in and when he came out, he was alone and I was waiting for him. I invited him to share my cab, and he got in.”

  “No doubt thinking you were offering him something rather different than a mere ride in a cab,” I mused.

  She smoothed her apron. “Well, he might have misunderstood me at first, but I corrected his thinking quite quickly. I simply told him what I had witnessed and that I thought we could help one another.”

  “And on the strength of that, Maximilian gave you an interview?” I asked.

  She shrugged again. Stoker looked at me. “Well, at least we know that Gisela did leave of her own accord. Whatever happened that night, it does not appear that Maximilian harmed her.”

  “Max would never harm her,” J. J. said succinctly. “He adores her.”

  “He has flirted outrageously with me and was prepared to avail himself of your services when he thought you were a prostitute,” I told her.

  “That is because he has very old-fashioned ideas about women, bless him,” she said with some fondness. “He thinks all women are either saints or whores. He does not know what to make of the rest of us.”

  “That is positively archaic,” I muttered.

  “He is an Alpenwalder aristocrat,” she pointed out. “They are not precisely known for their progressive thinking. The whole bloody country is mired in the Dark Ages.”

  “And you still wrote this,” I said, brandishing the newspaper, “to help him secure the post of consort?”

  “He is no worse than the rest of them,” she said in a weary voice. “I am most heartily tired of men.”

  Stoker looked a little wounded. “Not you,” I soothed.

  “Especially him,” she corrected darkly. “He ruined my story.”

  He bristled. “What on earth did I do?”

  “You threw yourself between the ‘princess’”—she jabbed a finger in my direction—“and the explosive. And after I had written a beautiful piece detailing Maximilian playing the hero. Anyone standing on that pavement knows what really happened.”

  “It was chaos,” I told her. “But your account was detailed—to a suspicious degree. In order for you to know how things were meant to play out, you must have had advance knowledge.”

  To her credit, she flushed again. “I am sorry. I ought to have told you, but Maximilian swore me to secrecy and said there was no danger whatsoever.”

  “Maximilian.” This time I did not bother to conceal my triumph. “He knew.”

  “He arranged it,” she said dully. “It was only a large firework. It was meant to make a good deal of noise and smoke and nothing more.”

  “Then what was the point of it?” Stoker asked.

  “To let Max play the hero with Gisela,” J. J. explained. “She has been dragging her feet over accepting his proposal and he is growing desperate. It was put to him that if she felt vulnerable, it might nudge her towards marriage. A situation where she was threatened—even if only for a moment—and he acted decisively and courageously might be just enough to tip her into his arms.”

  “Suggested?” Stoker pounced upon the word. “By whom?”

  “By an unlovely gentleman to whom he owes money. Maximilian is a bit of a gambler. He likes betting on horse races, dog races, turtle races.”

  “Turtle races?” Stoker asked. “How the bloody hell does one race a turtle?”

  “Slowly,” she said with a ghost of her old smile. “He went to Deauville after a quarrel with Gisela and found himself overextended. The fellow to whom he owes the money has rather nasty schemes for getting his debts repaid. The French lads in his employ are not above using a few persuasions—a club applied to a kneecap, an explosive tossed through a window. Whatever the situation requires. One of them threw the squib last night at a signal from Max. He blended into the crowd and was back in France on the first Channel steamer. You can despise him all you like, but I can assure you, the alternative would have been worse. The duke has fallen in with a particularly nasty crowd who will not take it well if he fails to pay his debts of honor.” She paused, drawing in a breath. “See here, I know what I did was very wrong, but no harm was actually done. I have spent my entire life taking risks like that—I haven’t had any other way to get ahead. And I have my first front-page byline out of it, so if you are expecting an apology, I’m afraid you will be sitting in the anteroom of hell before you hear one out of me.”

  She lifted her chin, and in spite of her defiance, I was rather glad to see something of her old spirit in evidence. I did not like a defeated J. J.

  “What about the chocolate box?” Stoker asked. “There was a threat left inside a box of rose and violet creams on the princess’s dressing table.”

  “Another suggestion from Max’s unsavory companion from Deauville. He wanted to put Gisela on edge a bit so the ‘bomb’ would feel even more frightening when it went off, make her feel like she was surrounded by enemies, that sort of thing.”

  “That is diabolical,” I said. “How on earth can she possibly marry such a man?”

  J. J. waved a dismissive hand. “He is no worse than most and better than many. The duke is treading water just now, you know. He owes a great deal of money and he is frightened. I think we all know how stupid frightened people can be.”

  We all fell silent for a moment, and then Stoker spoke. “When Maximilian and Gisela stopped on the way to the station, where did they go?” I asked.

  J. J. studied her nails. “I do not think I should say.”

  “What?” I asked, resisting the urge to shake her.

  J. J. shook her head and smiled. “I have told you quite enough and got nothing in return. Now, if you want anything else, you will have to make it worth my while.”

  “Stoker, your notecase,” I said quickly. “How much have you got?”

  “I do not want money!” she protested, clearly offended. “I want something far more valuable than that.” She sat back with an air of triumph.

  “What on earth could we have that is more valuable than banknotes?” Stoker asked.

  Her smile was rapacious. “It is very simple and will cost you absolutely nothing. I simply want to go to the dinner at Windsor Castle. As the attendant of Her Sere
ne Highness, the Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald.”

  A long moment of horrified silence followed her pronouncement.

  Stoker spoke first. “Out of the question.”

  “How do you even know about the dinner?” I asked.

  “It is all the Alpenwalders talk about,” she said. “They are very excited. Apparently, it is one of the grandest things to happen to them since the Holy Roman Emperor came to tea in 1225.”

  “No one in Europe was drinking tea in 1225,” I informed her acidly.

  She gave a shrug. “Details. Now, may I come?”

  “Absolutely not,” I told her, relishing the moment.

  She sat back and folded her arms over her chest. “Make it happen or I will publish a story in tomorrow’s newspaper about my time in the Sudbury Hotel working as a chambermaid where I uncovered the fact that an Englishwoman of dubious reputation has been masquerading as a missing princess,” she said coolly.

  “You would not dare,” Stoker began, but his tone was doubtful. She absolutely would dare.

  “My reputation is not dubious,” I protested.

  “It is not exactly lily white,” she countered. “And, of course, I will make certain to mention your innamorato, the black sheep of a distinguished aristocratic family. And naturally, if his name is mentioned, it will revive all those nasty stories about his divorce,” she added.

  “You absolute—” The word I used was not relevant to this narrative, but it was entirely appropriate, causing Stoker to blush furiously.

  “Sticks and stones,” J. J. said calmly. “Do we have a bargain? I will tell you everything I know about the princess’s departure, and I will promise not to write about your origins for publication if you take me with you to Windsor.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I find it highly suspicious that you would willingly relinquish as explosive a story as that simply for the chance to see Windsor Castle. It is open to the public, you know. You could visit some Sunday with a nice group of tourists. Take a hamper for a picnic luncheon.”