by Juliana Gray
She stopped just short of the counsel benches, her black sleeve mere feet away from Stefanie’s own, and she raised her veil over the crown of her hat.
“My lord, may I address the court?” she asked.
The judge’s whiskers made a resigned twitch above his jowls. “I don’t suppose one more will kill us, at this point. Proceed, your ladyship. But for the love of heaven, make it brief.”
“I understand the court has been informed of the tragic events of this morning in Belgrave Square, at the home of the Duke of Southam.” She looked neither at Stefanie nor at Hatherfield, who stood pale and fixed in the dock, but straight ahead at the judge.
“Mere minutes ago,” the judge said dryly. “Proceed.”
She lifted her left hand from the folds of her dress and extended a small square of paper. “I have here the signed confession of the eighth Duke of Southam for the murder of his wife Maria, on the night of the twenty-first of February.”
The courtroom, already numb from the tumult of the morning, looked at itself blankly.
Stefanie jumped to her feet. “A confession! But why . . .”
Lady Charlotte continued tonelessly. “If additional testimony is necessary to secure the release of the ninth duke, I offer myself as a witness, that on the night in question, after quitting the library in possession of the then Lord Hatherfield and his companion, I went to find the duchess and explain what I’d seen. She told me she would retire to her boudoir, and I should find Lord Hatherfield and bring him to her for a private audience. I followed her upstairs, but neither his lordship nor his companion was in the library. I went in search of him. By then, the ballroom was becoming crowded, and after looking for some time, I gave up and returned upstairs to tell the duchess, and that was where I saw Hatherfield in the hallway. He was looking for his companion and refused absolutely to attend me to the duchess’s boudoir. So I proceeded to the duchess’s rooms, and as I approached, I heard . . .” She paused, as if catching her breath. “I heard a series of strange sounds. I thought the duchess was choking. I went to knock on the door and the duke appeared. He was drying his hands on a linen towel. I saw a distinct splatter on his shirtfront, that I later realized was blood. He told me not to go in, that the duchess was indisposed. I left. And then, an hour later, the alarm was raised.”
“By God!” said Hatherfield.
“Madam,” said the judge, in a low and shocked voice, “do you know what you’re saying? That you have committed perjury?”
She looked at him. “I have not. I answered each question truthfully.”
“But not the whole truth,” he said. “And there is the question of motive.”
She bowed her head. “I have no idea why he might have killed her. I suppose he must have had some sort of mad spell. She was so dear and kind to me. I believe I refused to consider what I had seen for some time, to accept the truth—that a man I so admired could have committed such a deed—and by then, his lordship was already incarcerated, and . . .” She looked back up. “I was wrong. I hope my presence here will atone for the mischief my omission has caused. And I extend my deepest . . . my most heartfelt wish . . .” She turned to Hatherfield. Stefanie couldn’t see Lady Charlotte’s expression, but her hands pressed into her sides, buried in her dress. Hatherfield’s face, watching her, was lined with pity. “For your happiness,” she finished in a whisper.
“And I for yours,” said Hatherfield quietly.
The courtroom waited for more. Even the damsels forbore to swoon, fearful of missing a single instant. Stefanie gazed in astonishment at the corner of Lady Charlotte’s jaw, which was clenched tight beneath her pale skin. Her hand moved restlessly at her side.
Without warning, Hatherfield sprang into motion. He vaulted over the railing and launched himself at Lady Charlotte with a furious roar.
“No, don’t hurt her!” screamed Stefanie.
They crashed to the floor together, struggling in a mass of black-clothed limbs, and it was not until the shot fired harmlessly into the ceiling, raining a cloud of plaster on the horrified spectators, that Stefanie noticed what Hatherfield had detected from the vantage of the dock.
A small silver pistol, hidden in her ladyship’s tiny right hand, buried in the folds of her black mourning dress.
EPILOGUE
Paris
August 1890
The staff of the Crillon Hotel were having a hard time of it.
“Every day, it is the same!” exclaimed the maid Hortense. “They do not leave the room until it is nearly noon.”
“And the breakfast tray! To be left next to the door, not to disturb them!” Pierre, the room service waiter, shook his scandalized head. “The brioche, the chocolate, it will be as cold as ice!”
The maid propped her polished black shoes on a chair and sipped her coffee. “So at noon, Monsieur Henri tells me they have left. I rush in, I begin to clean, and then boom! The door crashes open, they are hand in hand, the duke begs my pardon and I am to come back later. Later! When is later, I ask? When they are left for dinner?”
Marie-Rose, the senior housemaid, settled down at the table with coffee and a wise smile. “They are on the honeymoon, the duke and duchess. Did you see them come in, four days ago? He carried her through the door like a prince from the fairy tale. And they are so much in love. It is natural they are insatiable for each other.”
Little Marguerite, fresh from the provinces, broke in eagerly. “And doesn’t the so-handsome duke give you ten francs when he asks you to leave? Soon you will be able to buy your own hotel, Hortense.”
“It’s scandalous,” sniffed Hortense. “The duchess is already great with child. He should control his base desire. Her belly is so fat, I don’t know what he sees in her.”
“Ah, you don’t know what it does to a man, to see the woman he loves grow round with his child,” said René, the dining room waiter, with his long black mustache and his twinkling eyes. He made a gesture with his hand to illustrate his point, and kissed the fingers. “And the duchess, she is not so great yet, her belly is like the sweet melon in the garden. How she blooms, like the rose.”
The room service bell rang. Pierre lifted himself up with a resigned sigh and left the room.
“Oh, Hortense only wishes the so-handsome duke would look at her, instead of his bride,” said Marie-Rose.
Marguerite sighed. “Ooh, what I wouldn’t give for a kiss from the duke.”
“Hortense wants more than a kiss from him, believe me.” Marie-Rose laughed.
Hortense tossed her head. “Well, and why not? He should know what it is to have a fine, fit Frenchwoman in his bed, instead of his fat English broodmare.”
Marie-Rose leaned forward. “She’s nothing like that. I hear she’s a princess. A real German princess! And so beautiful, with her red hair and her blue eyes that sparkle . . .”
Hortense stood up and snapped her towel. “Princess or not, she’s lucky to have a man like that, an English-German cow like her. Why, her hair’s so short, she can hardly pin it back! And if I catch him by himself . . .”
Marie-Rose laughed again. “Well, you won’t, Hortense, not if you stayed by the door like a shadow. And do you know why?”
Hortense tossed her head.
“Ooh! Why?” Marguerite bounced in her chair.
Pierre poked his head through the doorway and brandished a little square of paper. “For the honeymoon suite, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of raspberries. Raspberries! Sacré bleu!”
Marie-Rose turned her wise eyes on little Marguerite and chucked her gently by the chin.
“Because, my dear. They are in love.”
The ninth Duke of Southam, after much consideration, placed the final raspberry in the hollow between the ninth Duchess of Southam’s breasts and set the bowl aside.
“Don’t move,” he said.
His wife giggled, and the raspberries on her nipples rolled away.
“See what you’ve done!” He shook his head and replaced the raspberr
ies with exquisite care. “There. Perfect. Ah, look at you. You are the most delectable dessert I’ve ever seen.”
“But we haven’t even had dinner.”
“Hold still!”
Her laughing face assembled into a suppressed seriousness, and her limbs went still. But her eyes were wide and soft, and they gazed upon him as if he himself were her dinner, her feast, and she’d been fasting for weeks.
Which she hadn’t. Not even for hours.
He flexed his arms happily and bent over the first raspberry, in the hollow of her throat.
“Ooh! That tickles!”
“Hold still, my love. This is delicate work.” He lapped the raspberry into his mouth and tasted it, sweet berry and salty Stefanie. Exactly what he was hungry for.
He kissed his way downward to the next three raspberries, lined up in a flawless horizontal line: breast, cleavage, breast. He started from the left and nibbled his way right, gorging himself on the newly ripe fullness of her, the smooth slope of her blue-veined skin beneath his mouth.
His wife made a low sound in her throat and worked her hands into his hair. “I shouldn’t want this again,” she said. “We’ve hardly stopped all day. I believe the maid was scandalized when we came back in this afternoon.”
“What’s a man supposed to do when his wife gives him a look in the middle of the Tuileries?”
“Did I give you a look?”
“You most certainly did. And that dress you were wearing, with the lace about your breasts, reminding me how you looked while I made love to you this morning in your rakish new Parisian negligee. Anyway, I told you long ago that I was . . .”
“Insatiable.”
“Mmm. So you can’t say you weren’t warned.” He licked about her nipple, making sure every last trace of raspberry was gone, and then he suckled her in long pulses, until her back arched and a raspberry rolled away from the topmost point of her belly. “Haven’t I told you to lie still?” he said. “The night is short, and I have so many raspberries left to pluck.”
Stefanie took him by the shoulders and rolled him over, sending berries flying across the bed.
“Bother the bloody raspberries,” she said, and she lowered herself downward on her husband’s magnificent body.
Later, as they lounged on the bed, feeding each other a picnic supper delivered by a rather put-upon waiter, Stefanie set aside a torn-off piece of baguette and draped herself over her husband’s chest.
He picked up the bread and gave it back to her. “You must keep up your strength,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Be serious a moment.” She touched his chin. “I know we agreed not to discuss anything until after our little holiday . . .”
“Quite right. Far too serious for such a lighthearted occasion.”
“But since we seem to have such trouble even leaving this bed . . .”
“Nonsense. Quite untrue. I walked off to retrieve the room service tray not half an hour ago.”
She picked up a pillow and hit him with it, and then she nestled herself against him.
“But we should speak of it, you know. There’s something I should tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“The night of the murder. The duke came in and spoke to me, and I told him . . . I don’t remember exactly what I said, I was so angry. But I told him something of what your stepmother had done. And I think . . . I know that’s why he did it. To avenge you.”
“Or to punish her, for her infidelity.”
She raised herself up. “You don’t sound surprised.”
He was staring at the ceiling. “I suppose I put two and two together. Perhaps I knew the truth all along, like Charlotte, and I refused to accept it. That my father would murder her, that he would very nearly allow me to hang for the crime. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever understand my father. He was always a selfish brute. A coward, who never had the courage to face his own shortcomings. I don’t think I had a single loving word from him, and yet I suppose he loved me, in his way. He just loved himself more.” He paused. “But in the end, you know, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let me hang for it. I suppose that’s something.”
“You’ll be a much better father.”
“God, I hope so. With you by my side, showing me the way.”
She smiled and caressed his cheek. “We’ll have to decide where we’re going to live. Whether you can bear to keep the house in Belgrave Square, after all that’s happened there . . .”
“We can live wherever you want, my love.” He reached up and took her hair between his fingers. “You’re like the sun, eclipsing all the old memories.”
She might have had to blink, once or twice, before she could answer him. When she did, her voice might have held a touch of rasp. “I just want you to know that I don’t mind. I don’t need the splendor, if you don’t want it. Belgrave Square or a flat above the boathouse, I don’t care. I’ll be happy wherever we are.”
His thumb reached out to caress her cheek. “I know you will, sprite. One of countless reasons why I love you. But you read Mr. Wright’s telegram of this morning. The splendid success of the sale of Southam Terrace houses. We shall soon have quite enough capital for a new start entirely. Just in time, for a chap with a growing family to care for.”
“Mmm.” She slid to his side and laid her arm across his muscular chest. “Which brings me to another thing.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask . . .” She swallowed. “Jamie, I know you have an important position, you’re one of the foremost men in England now, and our child . . . our children . . .”
He was caressing her bare arm, up and down. “Go on, love. Tell me what you want.”
“I know our children will be English, that their inheritance and destiny lie there, but I want . . . I would like . . . for this child at least, our first . . .”
He waited patiently.
“Would you mind terribly if I wanted to have the baby in Germany? With my sisters near? I know the future duke should rightfully come into this world in the state ducal bed and all that, but . . .”
He laughed out loud. “Is that all? For God’s sake, Stefanie. We can have the baby wherever you like, so long as there are at least a dozen doctors available at a moment’s notice. All I want, all I care about, pray for . . .” His voice grew soft. He moved on his side and took her in his arms. “Stefanie, when a man comes within a whisker of losing everything, when he’s prepared himself to die, he learns what’s vital. And all I want is a safe delivery, a healthy wife and baby. You, our child. You’re everything in this world. You’re all that matters. If you want to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and deliver the infant there, I’ll carry the palanquin myself.”
“Ooh, that sounds lovely! What a splendid idea! Think of the view!”
“Except that there are no doctors on Mount Kilimanjaro, so I expect we shall have to stay rather unimaginatively at sea level.” He shrugged regretfully and lowered his mouth to hers.
A knock rattled the door.
The Duke of Southam, who was already engaged in kissing his wife senseless, lifted his head and called out, “Another time!”
Stefanie looped her hands around his head and dragged him back.
Knock knock knock. More insistent this time.
“I said, another time!” he called.
Knock knock knock. “A telegram, Your Grace! It is marked urgent!”
“Not nearly as urgent as making love to my wife,” he muttered, nibbling his way to her ear.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. “Your Grace!”
He lifted his head and sighed. “I suppose I’d better get that.”
Stefanie sat up and watched him while he stalked across the room at his lion’s pace, muscles flexing in the blue twilight that crept through the curtains. His beauty washed over her again, the powerful curve of his shoulder, the clean line of his jaw, the golden glint of his hair.
He was hers.
S
he placed her hands on her round middle and caressed her own skin in dreamy circles. “Well?” she said. “What is it?”
He looked up from the telegram. “It seems, my dear, you’re about to get your wish.”
“What wish?”
He returned to the bed and sat on the edge. “We’ve been summoned to Holstein Castle by the end of the week, by no less an authority than your own uncle, the Duke of Olympia.”
Stefanie snatched the telegram from his fingers and scanned it. “He doesn’t say why.”
“Of course not.” Her husband slid his arms around her, lifted her effortlessly from the bed, and carried her to the chaise longue by the window.
He opened the curtains and allowed the Parisian dusk to spill across her skin.
“But just in case,” he said, lowering himself between her legs, “I’m going to bring my revolver, a bottle of brandy, and a pair of very fast horses.”
NOTE
As a child, I was dragged—sometimes willingly, sometimes not—to evenings at the Seattle Opera, so inevitably operatic shenanigans make their way into my books. I’m afraid the entire Princesses in Disguise trilogy may have originated in the plight of the captured princess Aida. The love triangle connecting her, the warrior Radames, and the fiercely jealous Amneris in an imaginary long-ago Egypt inspired the dynamics between Stefanie, the Marquess of Hatherfield, and Lady Charlotte in Victorian London . . . in this case, thank goodness, with a much happier ending.
As I discovered, words sung beautifully in Italian often wind up translating poorly on a written English page. Still, I couldn’t resist throwing in Radames’s expressive declaration of love: Ergerti un trono vicino al sol (“Build you a throne next to the sun”). I think Hatherfield says it well, don’t you?
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