But despite the emotion that thrummed through her plea, the prince heard—or only chose to hear—part of it. “Your dear mother is unharmed, I trust? And your father?”
She nodded, saying nothing more of her family as she tried to turn the conversation back to where it had been. “If the English ships and army would only—”
“I have the most splendid image of your mother in my mind from that visit.” Deliberately the prince let his eyes go hazy and unfocused, savoring the memory as he avoided Isabella’s appeal. “She is standing at the top of a long golden staircase, with some wonderful pagan painting of Oriental splendor on the wall behind her.”
“That’s the staircase to the ballroom in the palace, and the painting is by Tintoretto, a scene of Queen Cleopatra and her followers. But you see, if the French are not made to leave, why—”
“She was wearing the most fantastic jewels, rubies such as I’d never seen before or since. She showed them to me later, so I might see the cunning little lions etched between the facets. Remarkable, even for crown jewels.”
The change in her expression was subtle—her mouth tightening a fraction, uneasiness flickering through her eyes—but it didn’t escape Tom. Was it the prince’s determined lack of interest in her appeal that caused the change, he wondered, or the way His Highness spoke more fondly of the jewels than of Isabella’s mother?
“The Fortunaro rubies are remarkable,” she said with unusual care. “There are no other jewels like them, not in all the world.”
The prince nodded solemnly. “Those rubies are beyond any value the world could put upon them. They are your country. Wouldn’t do to let those fall into Buonaparte’s grubby fingers, would it?”
“Her Royal Highness very nearly fell into those fingers herself, sir.” Lady Allen couldn’t bear being silent any longer, thrusting herself into the conversation with her usual eagerness. “Surely you have heard what befell her yesterday?”
The prince’s sandy brows rose with interest. “Buonaparte’s fingers here in London?”
“In a way.” Lady Allen smiled with the triumph of a new story for the prince. “Her Royal Highness was in a shop, admiring the ribbons such as any lady might, when a monstrous creature spewing Buonaparte’s venom leaped from behind a curtain with a knife as long as my arm, determined to plunge it deep into her royal breast!”
The other guests gasped and exclaimed, even if they’d already read of the attack in the newspapers. But only Tom—and Isabella—knew how far Lady Allen’s version ranged from the truth. He couldn’t wait to hear her ending to the story, either.
“How terrified you must have been, my dear.” The prince patted her on the arm. “But you did escape without harm? Someone came to your aid?”
Lady Allen could not resist. “Oh yes, sir! It was a most thrilling and dramatic rescue! It was—”
“Captain Lord Thomas Greaves.” Isabella turned to him, making a graceful little arc with her body that was scandalously close to a curtsy. But it was her smile that captured Tom and singled him out from the scores of others. It was a smile meant only for him, and one that made everything else seem false as pinchbeck. “It was Captain Greaves who saved my life.”
“Ah, Captain,” the prince said. “Now I recall your name. You’re Lord Lerchmere’s youngest son, and you’ve already served your king and country with great distinction, have you not?”
Tom bowed, wishing he’d stayed comfortably unnoticed. “I thank you, Your Highness, though your praise is undeserved. All I did was follow my orders, the same as any other man in the king’s service.”
“You sailors are a modest lot.” The prince managed to make that modesty sound vaguely distasteful. “But I can still praise you for your quick action to save my fair cousin’s life. Wouldn’t have done to have lost her before I found her, would it?”
Everyone laughed, the kind of duty that courtiers must follow. But Tom wasn’t laughing, and neither was Isabella.
Damnation, Bella, don’t look at me like this, he thought with growing frustration, as if thinking alone could make it so. Be tart, be sharp, be full of fire and spice, the way you usually are. Don’t let them see that you feel anything but indifferent toward me, else they’ll tear us both apart for the sport.
He made himself break the lock of her gaze, returning his attention to the prince. “My orders are to guard the princess, sir, whatever the cost. I always strive to do my best, and watching over Her Royal Highness is no different.”
“Well, yes, very good, very good.” With obvious relief, the prince turned back to Isabella. “Would you like to join me at the faro table, my dear?”
“Alas, not tonight.” Isabella’s smile was wan as she touched her fingertips to her temples. “My head has begun to ache abominably, and I fear I’d better retire instead.”
“Oh, poor lamb.” Lady Allen cooed with sympathy. “You’ve had far too much intrigue and menace for any lady to bear.”
“I’ll send for the carriage, my lady.” Tom beckoned to one of the footmen, then stepped forward to offer his arm to Isabella. Now it was proper, and no one would take any notice. Now he was simply following orders by tending to her welfare. But Lady Allen was right: there had been too much intrigue and menace for her tonight, thanks to Darden, and the sooner he could take her away, the better.
The prince waved his bejeweled hand to send them off, his thoughts already on the faro table. “Be a gallant equerry to my cousin, Greaves, that’s a good man, but be sure to bring her to Carlton House soon.”
Isabella smiled and nodded and murmured all the right things as she made her way from the room, but as soon as she was alone with Tom, waiting in the hall, she sagged forlornly against his arm.
“What a miserable mess I have made of tonight, Tomaso! I have failed, I have failed, and no one, not even you, could say otherwise.”
He switched to Italian, lessening the risk of an indiscretion. “I wouldn’t call it exactly a failure, Bella. His Royal Highness now knows who you are, and has invited you to call at Carlton House.”
“But he didn’t want to listen to me speak of Monteverde, let alone help me.” She frowned, checking the door for the footman. “Oh, praise the saints, here is the carriage at last.”
She climbed into the carriage without any help from Tom or the footman, and slumped in the far corner of the seat without bothering to arrange her skirts with her usual precision. Instead she tugged the tiara from her hair, wincing as she wrestled the pins free, then tossed the little half crown onto the seat beside her, the sapphires and diamonds winking back at her in the carriage’s twilight.
“I hate wearing that,” she said. “They say that every little girl wishes she were a princess, but I would say that is because they have never had their neck ache from holding their heads high with a weight of gold prickles and stones nailed into their skulls.”
She gave the tiara an extra shove with the back of her hand. “Do you know, Tomaso, that I have written to your King George every day since I’ve come to London, yet he has never replied? He has ignored me and dishonored me as if I were nothing, worthless, instead of the Princess di Fortunaro.”
Tom did not know that, though from what he’d heard from Cranford, he wasn’t surprised. “His Majesty is not a well man, Bella. Likely his health keeps him from his duties.”
She shot him a withering glance. “Then his attendants and secretaries would answer his correspondence, yes? That is how it would be with my father. Or are the English secretaries sickly, too?”
“How in blazes should I know, Bella?”
“Oh, very well, you shouldn’t, not about that. You’re absolved.” Irritably she poked one of her hairpins at the seat cushion, over and over, no doubt imagining it to be some part of the king’s anatomy. “But still, all you English wish to recall your pleasant days in Monteverde, the sunshine, the lions, my beautiful mother the queen, la, la, la, but when we would ask for your help, then you only look the other way and pretend not to hear.”
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br /> “The graybeards in Whitehall claim diplomacy takes time.”
“But I do not have time!” She smacked her hand hard against the side of the carriage. “I was sent here for a reason. Who knows what has happened to my home since I left? Who knows what has become of my family? No one does, or no one is telling me if they do. All my country and my family has is me, and tonight I did nothing—nothing!—to help them.”
“You did do something, Bella,” he insisted. “You made the prince notice you, which is no minor feat for a man so easily distracted as His Royal Highness.”
She sniffed. “My mother would have had him eating crumbs from her palm like a pigeon.”
He let that pass without comment. “But you gave Monteverde a face and a name, and by tomorrow morning, every person in the ton and most of Parliament besides will know you, too.”
“But that’s not enough, not by half.” She sighed with frustration, once again pressing her hand to her forehead. “Is it any wonder my head aches so?”
“Tomorrow will be better. Sleep will clear your head, and then you can chart your next course.” That sounded empty and foolish, the kind of meaningless advice offered by spinster aunts, but Tom didn’t know what else to say. Though he’d intended on lecturing her about the evils of the Marquis of Banleigh here in the carriage, Darden now seemed the least of her worries, and Tom decided his lecture would keep better until the morning. Besides, Darden was more his problem than hers, anyway. “The world always seems a cheerier place once the sun rises.”
“You do not need to placate me, Tomaso.” She smiled wearily, closing her eyes. “I need to be strong, not coddled. I am a Fortunaro, and I can bear it. You, of anyone in London, can understand that, yes?”
With her face relaxing, her lashes feathered down across her cheeks and her lips slightly parted, she looked much younger—far too young for all the burdens life had thrust upon her, Fortunaro princess or not.
“Yes,” he said softly. “I understand.”
But she was already asleep.
With his hat pulled low to mask his face, Lord Ralph Darden hurried through the black shadows of the narrow street. He had left his carriage to wait, not wanting even his driver for a witness, and come the rest of the way on foot. He knew he didn’t belong in this neighborhood at this hour, and he touched the hilt of his sword beneath his cloak, just for reassurance.
The comforting haze of the brandy was fading to a dull ache in his forehead, but he hadn’t allowed himself the solace of the bottle nestled waiting in the carriage. Later, later, after his work here was done. He might have lost deeply—again—this night at Lady Allen’s house, yet still he sensed his luck might be beginning to change.
Behind the shuttered windows he heard a baby crying, then the sounds of its mother singing it softly back to sleep in words that weren’t English. The smells that lingered in this narrow street weren’t entirely English, either, the usual London coal smoke and river tang overlaid with the fragrances of dark spices and onions and garlic cooked in yellow oil.
Carefully Darden counted the doorways from the corner, stopping at the fifth house, the one with the windows shuttered and padlocked to protect the treasures inside. He hadn’t been here for months, but then, he hadn’t had anything left of value in his mortgaged houses to sell, either. Yet he was certain the man behind those padlocked shutters would welcome him, even at this hour, once he heard what Darden had to say.
His knock echoed in the empty street, the sound bouncing off the brick walls and cobblestones. He knocked again on the door, harder, and at last it cracked open.
“Maestro Pesci.” Darden leaned close to the door, showing his face so the single eye peering at him would make no mistake. “It’s Lord Darden. Pray open that door, so we might talk.”
The door opened no further. “It’s past midnight, my lord. Come back at a seemly hour.”
“Hold.” Darden thrust his shoulder into the crack, knowing the old man on the other side was too frail to shut the door against him. “Would now be more seemly if I told you I met the Principessa di Fortunaro here, tonight, in London?”
“You are mad, my lord!” The old man struggled to shut the door, but Darden held firm.
“She is here, Pesci. She escaped. I danced with her. She is very beautiful, your fair princess, and she dances with the grace of an angel.”
Pesci opened the door another fraction, just widely enough to spit on the step beside Darden’s foot. “Bah, she is a Fortunaro, with rot in her heart and evil in her soul!”
“What matters is that she is in London.” Darden glanced disdainfully at the glob of spittle, far too close to his well-polished toe. “She’s that close to you, Pesci, waiting for you to settle the score.”
The man laughed bitterly, a painful wheeze. “What of it, my lord? I am too old and sick for such wickedness.”
“But you must know many others in London who are neither.”
“I know more than I should, my lord.” At last he opened the door for Darden to slip inside. “This city can count them by the dozen.”
Darden had never been in the dealer’s shop by night, nor, after this, did he ever wish to return. A score of blank-eyed statues of ancient gods and goddesses filled this front room like a crowd of pressing ghosts, the flickering light of Pesci’s single candle granting the cold marble an unsettling life. Darden would have given his last coin for a drink now, and who would blame him?
Instead he turned his back on the statues, focusing instead on this hunched old man in the striped stocking cap. He’d wound an ancient scarf around his throat against imagined chills, and beneath that was the queer talisman he always wore, a triangle made from twigs, that Darden guessed had powers against the evil eye or other of his superstitious mumbo jumbo.
“You’ve always claimed the Fortunaro family made you suffer. You said you’d do anything to make them pay for your pain. You said they—”
“I know what they did.” Pesci shoved back the grimy sleeve of his dressing gown and held out his trembling arm. Wispy white hairs curled across the shriveled skin, yet still the scar remained sharp and clear: the letter L, seared into the flesh forever by an iron brand.
“They said I was a thief, my lord, and they marked me as one: L for ladro, for thief.” Pesci’s voice shook with an outrage twenty years old. “They said I’d stolen their antiquities, when I was the one who’d sweated and dug to free the past from the soil. They said what I found was theirs, and made me pay. They were the true thieves, but because they were the Fortunari, I was the one who was branded, and banished forever from Monteverde.”
“Then the gods have given you a gift, Pesci.” Darden kept his face impassive. He was a gambler to the marrow of his bones; he could not help it, any more than he could forget the look that had flitted across the girl’s face when the prince had mentioned her mother’s jewels. It was a guess, a gamble, but the chill that had raced down his spine had told him otherwise.
What he was beginning tonight could cost the princess her life if it failed, and maybe his own, as well. He was a peer; he’d never done anything like this before. Yet he couldn’t help himself, not with the stakes in the balance almost too great for him to imagine.
“Your revenge, maestro,” he continued. “Your vendetta. I will tell you when and where the princess will be, and you can arrange the rest.”
Pesci ran his tongue across his toothless gum, considering. “She is alone? She is unprotected?”
“She has only one man appointed to guard her, an English navy captain.”
“One Englishman.” Pesci shrugged elaborately. “That is nothing. But her suffering must last, as did mine. Her fear must be built, step by step.”
Darden swallowed his excitement. “Then you will do it?”
“No, my lord.” The old man’s eyes glittered shrewdly. “Not until you tell me the truth.”
“The truth?” Darden was stalling. He had never felt at ease with the truth, and thought it much overrated.
“The truth, my lord.” Pesci would not let it pass. “You are one of the wicked ones, my lord. You have lost your patrimony on the turn of a card, and you have squandered the treasures of your mother’s heart with each throw of your dice. So how will you profit from this, my lord? What is your prize?”
What is your prize? A beautiful young princess to be his muse? A way to make the rest of the world grovel at his feet when he had a princess on his arm? A chance to play the grandest hero that could make a princess sigh and swoon, and forget that righteous prig Greaves and his foolish histrionics?
Or a dowry so fantastically rich it would outshine the combined wealth of a dozen factory heiresses, a fortune so vast not even he could consume it?
“So, my lord.” Pesci’s voice shrank to a feathery whisper. “Tell me. What is your stake in my vendetta?”
“My stake?” Darden smiled slowly, the smile of a gambler graced with the winning hand. “My stake will be the Fortunaro rubies.”
Chapter Eight
“These are for you, ma’am.” The maid stood in the doorway to Isabella’s bedchamber, her arms filled with a large silver vase of nodding white roses. “They just come, an’ Her Ladyship said to bring them up directly.”
Eagerly Isabella stood, dusting away the crumbs from her breakfast toast from her palms. Perhaps the flowers were from the prince, a welcome after meeting her last night at Lady Allen’s house. “Set them there. You have shown them to Captain Lord Greaves first? He has found no dangers hidden away inside?”
“No, ma’am. Captain His Lordship is taking his morning walk, and is not at home.” With great care—and relief—the maid placed the vase in the center of the table. “But Her Ladyship says since they came from the Marquis o’ Banleigh, by the hands o’ his own footman in his own livery, then they must be safe for you to accept.”
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