An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  In the end, I was glad of J. J.’s presence, for it was absolutely a matter of all hands to the tiller. Whatever toilette I had made the previous evening was nothing compared to the effort for a formal dinner. I was washed, powdered, brushed, massaged, pinned, coiffed, dressed, bedecked, and bedizened.

  “I feel like a warhorse preparing for battle,” I complained at one point. “How on earth do women make a habit of dressing like this?”

  The baroness managed a thin smile. “One becomes accustomed to the weight. And this is not a full state occasion,” she reminded me. “Enthronings are even grander occasions with a full crown and scepter and the rod of St. Otthild as well as a mantle of state that stretches nine yards in length.”

  Little wonder the princess had run away, I reflected, if it meant escaping such ludicrous trappings. The baroness explained that it was only the opening of the Alpenwalder parliament and enthronings and royal weddings that called for full regalia, but an occasion as important as dinner at Windsor Castle still called for formal Alpenwalder court dress. If it had been left to the gown alone, I would have made no complaint. Borrowed from the style of the Russian imperial ladies, it had an undergown of heavy white satin thickly embroidered with Alpenwalder emblems in gold silk. The overgown was rich scarlet velvet edged in ermine, the long, slashed sleeves sweeping to the floor and lined in white satin. The deep neckline, rounded and positioned just at the edge of the shoulders, was banded in a wide swathe of more golden embroidery, which trailed down the front of the overgown and around the long train.

  My hair was once again plaited and piled and pinned with an array of false pieces into an elaborate confection to hold a coronet of old rose-cut diamonds set around enormous, luscious rubies. A deep blue sash crossed from one shoulder to my waist, secured with the jeweled order of St. Otthild, a gem-encrusted otter rampant with a sprig of St. Otthild’s wort gripped in his tiny diamond teeth.

  I looked to the baroness and realized she was not wearing her order. “What has become of your sash, Baroness?”

  She threw up her hands in disgust. “I cannot find it. It was creased after last night and I told that wretched girl to see it pressed, but it has disappeared. No doubt she has pawned my jeweled otter as well,” she added bitterly. It seemed harsh to believe so easily that Yelena might have resorted to thievery, but I remembered her resentment against the Alpenwalders and her eagerness to turn her hand to extortion. It was a small leap from there to thinking she might help herself to the odd trinket to sell, although I could hardly imagine a brisk secondary market for diplomatic honors.

  While I pondered this, the baroness added the finishing touches to my ensemble. I could scarcely move for the weight of it all, but there was something about the grandeur that created within me a determination to rise to the occasion. Together the baroness and I had replicated her tricks of using cosmetics to enhance my resemblance to the princess, and J. J. had a few thoughts of her own that heightened the effect further. She even managed to camouflage the bit of violet bruising that had risen on my chin as a result of my encounter with Douglas Norton. As I stared into the looking glass, I felt light-headed, detached suddenly from all that I had known and all that I was.

  It occurred to me then that, were it not for an accident of birth, a peculiarity of the law, I might have rightfully worn such things. I was the child of a prince, the descendant of queens, and the blood in my veins was no less blue for having been mixed with an Irish actress’s. If her marriage had been recognized, I would have worn such garments from my youth, enjoyed the adulation and the applause. But I would also have stifled my own spirit, I reflected. Those quirks of character that made me the woman I had become were because I had been given the freedom to do as I pleased. No royal protocol dictated my upbringing; no august personages dictated my education. I had been at liberty to study as I wished, pursuing my own interests and friendships, embarking upon travels and learning to rely upon no one but myself. I had not had the privileges of royalty, but neither had I endured the privations, and of these I could number many. Just the few days I had spent in Gisela’s slippers had taught me that I could never endure the strictures of her life, the endless and tedious round of engagements and obligations. I belonged to no one, was beholden to no one. Whether I starved or whether I throve, the outcome lay firmly in my own hands. And that freedom was worth all the diamonds in the world, I decided.

  “It is natural to be overwhelmed,” the baroness said kindly. “But you will do this and you will do it with dignity and confidence, I have no doubt.”

  Her voice said she had no doubt but her eyes were not so certain. I smiled at her and squared my shoulders. “I will do my best.”

  I raised my chin imperiously. “Now, let us go. It will not do to be late.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  If my own metamorphosis from lepidopterist to princess had been dramatic, Stoker’s was scarcely less impressive. I emerged from the bedchamber to find him standing at the hearth, posture erect, costumed in the full dress uniform of the Alpenwalder guard of honor. The livery was black, piped with brilliant alpine blue. The trousers had been changed in favor of knee breeches with white stockings, displaying the splendor of his calves as effectively as the tight coat paid compliment to the breadth of his shoulders and the slimness of his waist. The shako had been replaced by a soft cap of black velvet with a long blue plume secured with a jeweled pin. A wide riband of blue and white crossed his chest, and a black silk patch was secured over his eye. Spotless white gloves completed the ensemble.

  He had been speaking to the chancellor when I entered, but when he caught sight of me, he stopped, and for a moment we were the only two people in the room, perhaps even on earth. I paused and he advanced, bowing low as he swept off the cap. I realized then that he wore a short velvet cape that swung as he moved with a sort of Elizabethan swagger.

  “Most effective,” I murmured.

  “Dazzling,” he said, brushing his mouth over my fingers.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind, I think we really could get on,” said Maximilian, not troubling to conceal his peevishness. He was wearing a costume nearly identical to Stoker’s, only trimmed with quantities of silver braid. The garments suited him, but when compared to Stoker, he seemed a penciled copy of an oil painting, and I did not begrudge him his sulkiness. He was accustomed to being accounted one of the handsomest men in the Alpenwald, and now he had competition.

  I smiled at him as graciously as I could as I took his arm. In strict accordance with protocol, I was accompanied by the duke while the chancellor escorted the baroness. Stoker and J. J.—pressed into service for the evening and now changed into a stark and pristine uniform of white and black—brought up the rear. As we made our way down to the lobby, the chancellor explained the arrangements for the evening.

  “We will leave from the back entrance,” he said, directing Maximilian. “It is not precisely a secret where we are bound, but neither is it publicized. Discretion is key,” he stressed. “Our hosts have sent a pair of private carriages and we will travel by these conveyances instead of by train.”

  The waiting carriages bore no crest or distinguishing marks, but it was apparent that the owner was a person of immense wealth. Every detail was of the highest quality, from the tufted silk of the squabs to the delicate Tudor rose motif on the glass panes of the lamps. The first was just large enough to admit the four of us—the baroness, chancellor, duke, and I—once my train had been folded carefully around me. The baroness and I traveled facing forward with the duke while the chancellor took the center of the opposite seat. Stoker and J. J. were relegated to the second carriage as befitted their station for the night.

  The night was clear and cold and the journey took much longer than expected as we bowled briskly away, through the city and into the dark countryside of Berkshire. My aunts and I had moved often during my childhood, exchanging one country village for another very
like it, all in a bid to avoid those who might seek out the Prince of Wales’s semi-legitimate child. I had neither known nor appreciated their reasons for uprooting my tender self at the time. Instead, it had been an endless round of beginnings and partings. Most of the hamlets I had forgot, but one stayed fresh in my memory—a tiny settlement in the shadows of Windsor Castle, just beyond the meadows of Runnymede. I remembered the broad fields, lushly green and dotted with the fleecy clouds of sheep grazing on the spring grass. I had fallen from an apple tree there and broken my arm, I recalled. That was when I had received my first butterfly net as a gift from the aunts for my birthday. Enchanted, I had taken it on a long walk, netting my first specimen in the ring net now long replaced by a professional’s. But I had loved that net, loved the feeling of the wind in my hair and the earth under my feet. It was in those meadows, chasing the lazy flap of a lepidopteron, that I had learnt my trade.

  And one afternoon, late in the autumn of my twelfth year, I wandered further than usual in pursuit of Cyaniris semiargus, the Mazarine Blue, a pretty little Palearctic butterfly. I hopped over streams and scrambled over stiles as the afternoon drew to a close. The butterfly—a male with delectably blue coloration—eluded me, lifting itself on gossamer wings to freedom. Dejected, I stood for a long moment, collecting my whereabouts. And there it was: just ahead on the horizon. Windsor Castle. I stared up at the castle, the proud stone enormity of it rising above the landscape like something out of myth. The afternoon light lay softly upon it, gilding the cold grey battlements to a glimmering sheen that would have suited King Arthur himself. It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen, and I stood, rooted to the spot like a meadow flower, wondering about the princes and princesses who sheltered within its walls. I knew our queen was Victoria and that she lived there, wrapped in widow’s weeds. Her children must have been largely grown by then, but I imagined them still in the nursery, dressed in sailor suits and lawn dresses, attending their lessons and eating milk and bread from porringers marked with a crown. Oh, how I envied them! Not their royalty, I realized with a pang. I envied them each other. I envied the sense of belonging to a family with more brothers and sisters almost than one could count, of knowing a mother’s touch, of a home that stood, resolute and unchanging in the mellow autumn gold of that afternoon.

  Little did I realize that I had almost as good a claim upon the place as those who dwelt within its walls, I thought as the carriages bore us out of London into the west. Such were my thoughts, and I was aware of a rising excitement, not at visiting a castle, but at setting foot in what was my family home. My ancestors had built the place, stone by stone, and had lived there, had died there, loved and hated and borne new generations within its walls. And at last, I would come home.

  So lost in my own reflections was I that I did not realize we had reached Windsor until the castle loomed above us in all of its grey majesty and I felt a sudden thrust of longing for Stoker. I had told him once, as we lay curled together in the dark, of my memory of the place, of the wrench I felt that afternoon when I returned home to find the aunts had packed us up and were moving us on once more. I never saw the castle again except in memory, and each time I embellished it more, raising the towers a little higher, the battlements a little wider. I fashioned of it a faery castle, and I had confided in Stoker that the frisson of feeling that day in the water meadow had been unlike anything I had experienced before or since. Long after discovering my father’s identity, I recalled that day, and I marveled at my experience, wondering if somehow the memory of my ancestors, deep in my bones and blood, had stirred at the home they had built. It was the sort of thing one could only speak of in the dark, fast in a lover’s arms, safe in the shelter of his kindness. He had not ridiculed me. There had not been even a hint of a smile in his voice. Only his broad, capable hands, gently stroking my hair as I talked. He would understand what coming to Windsor meant to me.

  And there it was, just as I had remembered. Only now it stood against the purple velvet of a winter sky, the windows glowing with lamplight. A river mist had risen, curling softly about the foundation stones of the castle, causing it to look as if it were floating on a cloud. No mere mortals dwell here, it seemed to say. This is a place of grandeur, of royalty, of a thousand years of power, and who are you to dare to come inside?

  I shivered and the baroness gave me a concerned look. “Are you cold, my dear?”

  “I am fine,” I told her in a hollow voice.

  I had a moment to collect myself as the carriage passed under the great gate and drew to a halt in the courtyard. The castle’s footmen came forward to help us alight as the driver steadied the horses. The chancellor and Maximilian, nearest the door, made their exit first. The baroness followed, and I was surprised to find that Stoker had already alighted from his carriage and stood ready to hand me from mine. He paused, giving me just a moment to gather my courage.

  “It is time,” he said softly. I rested my hand in his, fixing my gaze upon him, my only anchor in an uncertain world at that moment. He squeezed my hand, so tightly I felt the bones ache, and I clasped his hand in return as I descended in lieu of the words I could not say aloud.

  Behind me, the baroness and J. J. gathered my train in their arms, holding it aloft until I moved up the broad stone steps, a river of scarlet carpet flowing down the center. The footmen stood at attention, the buttons of their livery sparking in the torchlight. Maximilian stepped forward and I relinquished my hold on Stoker, leaving my hand on his as long as I dared.

  “Ready, poppet?” Maximilian asked, baring his teeth in a smile. I put my hand on his arm and felt the baroness and J. J. lower the train, unfurling it behind me. The weight of it dictated that I move slowly, in a stately walk very unlike my usual energetic gait. At the top of the steps, an official of some sort in a dignified uniform waited for us, bowing respectfully.

  “Your Serene Highness,” he pronounced. “Welcome to Windsor Castle. This way, if you please.”

  I accepted his greeting with a grave inclination of the head, and Maximilian and I followed as he led the way into the castle proper. A housekeeper came forward to collect J. J., and she gave me a little nod as she followed. I had kept my part of the bargain and got her into the castle. What she did with the opportunity was up to her.

  I turned my attention to the dignitary who was keeping up a courteous patter as he escorted us. “Each of our foreign guests has been assigned an English host, a way of making the visit a more cordial and personal one,” he explained. “Your host is waiting here. The others have all arrived, so once you have been introduced, we will proceed directly into dinner.”

  We approached a door, heavy oak carved thickly with the motif of oak leaves, and the footman standing outside threw it open. The room was smaller than I expected, a sort of anteroom, I supposed, furnished in serviceable but not grand style. Across the room was a bank of windows, the curtains drawn against the chilly night. A fire burned merrily on the hearth, and in front of it, warming himself, stood a distinguished Englishman in formal evening dress. He turned, a smile of welcome on his lips.

  The smile faltered only slightly as the official made the introduction. “Your Serene Highness, may I present your escort for the evening, Sir Rupert Templeton-Vane? Sir Rupert, Her Serene Highness, the Hereditary Princess of the Alpenwald.”

  If my heart had stilled at the sight of the castle, that was nothing compared to the reaction when I came face-to-face with Stoker’s elder brother. Sir Rupert, the second of the Templeton-Vane brothers, had, upon occasion, come to our aid. He was the most conventional of the siblings, preferring a life of rectitude and regularity to the flamboyant extravagances of the eldest—Tiberius—or the cheerful mischief of the youngest, Merryweather. The fact that he and Stoker seldom saw eye to eye was no great mystery. They were as alike as chalk and cheese, they claimed. And yet. From time to time, I caught a glimpse of the daring and dash that ran like wildfire through the Templeto
n-Vanes behind the façade of correctness.

  From behind me, I heard Stoker’s muffled curse and I went forward, extending my hand to Rupert. “How do you do, Sir Rupert?”

  Rupert bowed over my hand, pressing his lips to the gloved fingers. “How do you do, Your Serene Highness?”

  Without rising, he lifted his dark gaze to mine. I gave an imperceptible shake of the head and he straightened.

  “May I present the rest of my entourage?” I said, launching into introductions. Maximilian looked bored whilst the baroness and chancellor were polite.

  “How very kind of you to welcome us,” I said, infusing my words with a trace of a German accent.

  “Not at all, madame. There are few things in life I enjoy more than a partner at dinner whose conversation is certain to entertain,” he said, his mouth twitching.

  The castle usher made a discreet gesture and Rupert extended his arm. “Shall we go in?”

  I accepted his arm and he covered my hand with his own, pressing tightly. “How happy I am to further the cause of Anglo-Alpenwalder relations,” he said loudly. I smiled at him and he dropped his voice. “What in the name of seven hells is going on?” he asked in a harsh whisper, still smiling as we made our way into the corridor.

  “You sound just like your brother,” I whispered back.

  “Miss Speedwell,” he began.

  “The last time we met, you called me Veronica. And you said I could call you Rupert,” I reminded him.

  “I was rather influenced by that diabolical drink you gave me,” he retorted.

  “Aguardiente,” I said. “I regret I do not have my flask upon my person at present. This ensemble does not permit such appurtenances.”