“We were mistaken.” Staufer’s mouth was white at the edges. “It was far worse than we had thought.” Still in that flat, military report tone, he recounted the discovery of the dead guard, the revelation of the kidnapping, the involvement of Hugo and Helga Herzlos, the midnight intruder.
Fury flared in the prince’s eyes as he stepped toward the captain. “There was danger, real danger? You knew this and still you allowed the princess…” Conrad caught himself. “…these ladies to continue with this masquerade?”
The pain in Max’s eyes was unbearable. Susannah stepped forward. “It was our decision, Sire. Max—Captain Staufer—wanted us to leave, but we felt an obligation to continue.”
Conrad turned his anger on her. “An obligation? An obligation to make a fool of me?”
Max flinched but Susannah continued in a steady voice. “We were afraid that if we fled, you and your country might be in greater danger.”
“So I am such a weakling that I must be protected by women,” Conrad said bleakly. “I could not be trusted to deal with a crisis. What did you fear? That I would collapse like a frightened child? That I would go running to my uncle?” His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Yes, that would have been General Bergen’s great fear. Those two old men—their hatred of each other rules their every action. But you, Max, I thought you at least were my friend. Had you no faith in me? Why did you…?”
He turned to look at Olivia, who was by now sobbing into Susannah’s shoulder. “Was it all lies, then? Yes. All lies. Get out of my sight, all of you.”
* * *
Staufer accompanied them back to their quarters, but he might as well have been somewhere else. Anywhere else. They walked through the endless marble corridors—those blasted endless corridors—as if they had some purpose, but their only purpose was to hide their distress.
Max’s face showed such pain that Susannah wanted to weep. Why was he taking all the responsibility on himself? She also wanted to shake him. She wanted to say, “Dammit, it wasn’t your fault! This was the general’s idea, not yours. You wanted to end it. You wanted to tell the prince the truth, but we wouldn’t let you!”
It had never been his idea, and if at the beginning he had thought of it as a lark, a joke—well, so had they all. No one expected it to turn so serious. And when it had turned serious, when they discovered that the princess had not just run off by herself in a fit of temper, Max was the one who wanted to end it. He had seen the danger, but they had forced him to go on with it, and he couldn’t end it without betraying all of them.
Instead, they had betrayed him. She had betrayed him. And the others—Aunt Augusta hadn’t wanted to give up the excitement; Olivia hadn’t wanted to lose the chance to help the prince; the general… Susannah had no idea what the general wanted, unless it was to thwart Count Herzlos and his family. But what they all wanted would not have mattered if she had not insisted on staying. She knew that. Max would have overridden the other protests. Hers was the only one that had stopped him.
Were it not for her, he would have done the honorable thing. To protect them, he would have sent them all to safety. Then he would have told the prince everything, doubtless taking all the blame on himself. He had put aside his best judgment because she insisted on staying, and though she had not admitted it, she had insisted for the purely selfish reason that she wanted to stay with him. She hadn’t thought about what would be best for him, only about what she wanted for herself. She was an arrogant, selfish fool.
When they finally reached the princess’s suite, Olivia ran into her bedchamber, probably to weep in private. That was something else for Susannah to feel guilty about. She had seen that Olivia was falling in love with the prince. She should have done something to stop it. There must have been something she could have done.
She spun around and faced the wall, her hands pressed to her mouth. What was she to do? She was supposed to be the sensible one, the one who would take care of the others and see to it that they did not get into trouble. Instead, she had thought only of herself and ignored her responsibilities. Well, what she had to do now was deal with the consequences of her failure.
It was all too humiliating.
She took a deep breath and turned back to face Max, who was staring at the floor, his jaw clenched.
“Forgive me,” she said, as he raised his eyes to look at her. “I should have listened to you when you wanted us to leave.”
He shook his head. “No, you must forgive me. It is all my fault. I should have trusted him. I decided, when I had no right to decide. I was too sure I could protect him, protect you. In my pride, I thought I could do it all, and I failed. I have dishonored myself.” He reached out and touched her cheek, just a feather of a touch. “The truth is that I wanted to keep you near. I did not want you to disappear from my life.”
“I wanted to stay near you too,” she whispered.
They began stumbling over each other’s words, reaching out their hands first in supplication and then to offer comfort. Before they knew it, they were clinging to each other in desperate longing. He rained kisses on her face, on her hair, and crushed her to him. She clung to him, sobs punctuating the kisses she pressed on him.
Finally, Max lifted his head and slowly stepped back from her, his arms resting on her shoulders as if he could not bear to stop touching her. “I must go. You understand, do you not? In my arrogance I have failed my prince. Honor demands that I redeem myself.”
Susannah nodded but did not speak.
“To do that, I must find the princess. I should never have left the search to others. I should not have…” He stopped with a short laugh. “Useless now to say what I should not have done. All I can do is try to repair the damage.”
She nodded again. Painful though it was, she understood. Apologies were meaningless now. Action was needed to bring things around. “Where will you go?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I must start where she disappeared. Someone may have seen something. There may be witnesses, some hint. I was careless at first, thinking she had just run off, and later…” He smiled wryly and lifted a hand to touch her cheek. “Later I left things to the general, and now I am not even certain that he wanted to find her. I should not have done so, but…”
“No matter. When you find her, you will return.” She spoke with absolute conviction.
“You will wait?”
“Here, if the prince permits. Otherwise…”
“I will come to you. Whatever happens, wherever you are, I will come to you.”
“And I will be waiting.”
When the door had closed behind him, Susannah stood, frozen, until Lev padded to her side and pushed his head under her hand. She ran her fingers through the thick fur as he looked up at her face. “You saw all that, didn’t you? And you understand.”
The dog nudged her toward the bedroom, and she obediently allowed herself to be herded to the bed. “Yes,” she told him, “I would like to lie down.” She did so, and Lev remained beside her, standing guard.
She smiled when she realized that the dog was watching the wall where the door to the staircase had opened only a few days before. “Clever Lev,” she murmured. “You remember where the danger came from. If only I knew where the danger lies now. If only I could help Max now.”
She sat up abruptly and focused on the panel that disguised the door to the staircase. Her eyes narrowed. It had been night, and it had been dark. Josef had checked it, but only by candlelight, and he was looking for other intruders. The next day, when they looked more carefully, they were only interested in finding the mechanism to open the door. Once they had done that, they had simply wedged it shut.
However, they had not bothered to examine the passage itself. Not carefully. The intruder could have dropped something. There could be some clue in there, something that could help them.
She walked over to the panel, remo
ved the wedge, and pressed the board that released the latch. The door swung open silently. The silence gave her pause. There had been no noise the other night either when the intruder came in. Only well-oiled hinges move so silently. Had they been specially oiled in preparation for the attempt to kidnap Olivia? Or was this a regularly used way of moving around the castle? Or perhaps of spying on guests who were given these chambers?
Returning to the sitting room, she lit one of the oil lamps, adjusted the wick, and carried it back to the staircase. It provided some light in the stairwell—more than a candle, at least—and she descended carefully. A thud behind her almost made her drop the lamp, but her heart resumed its normal rhythm when she saw that it was only Lev, following behind her. “You should have told me you were coming,” she scolded. “If I had dropped the lamp on this wooden staircase, I might have burned down the entire palace. I don’t think that would have pleased the prince one bit.”
Lev just looked at her. The dog’s calm was reassuring. She took a deep breath and continued the descent. Unfortunately, there seemed to be nothing on the staircase but dust. Plenty of dust. She held up her skirts with her free hand in an effort to keep from getting them filthy. Then she reached a landing and she saw that although the staircase continued down, there was an opening to the side. It was so dark that she would not have noticed it had there not been footprints in the dust to show the way.
As she moved slowly through the narrow passage, she could hear voices. She stopped to listen, but could not make out the words. The voices were up ahead. She almost turned and ran back. What excuse could she possibly give for being here?
She rallied her courage. If the voices belonged to servants, she would not need to give any excuse. And if they belonged to any of the villains? Well, she doubted they had any more business being in this passage than she did, and she had Lev to protect her.
So she continued cautiously down the passage and soon realized that the voices were coming not from the passage but from one of the rooms. Of course. The passage had been built for servants, so naturally it would open into more than one room. As she drew closer, she could recognize Helga’s shrill accents and Hugo’s rumble. At the door, she pressed her ear to the crack.
Hugo was railing about the prince’s sudden popularity with the populace. “…Showing off for that insipid little blonde. We must do something about it.”
“It won’t last.” Helga sounded amused but definite. “Our dear papa will have him do something stupid, and his bubble of popularity will burst. You really must learn to keep your head, Hugo.”
“But suppose Staufer persuades him to do something else?”
“No need to worry about that.” A third voice, with a bark of laughter. Dieter Angriffer? It sounded like the sneering tones of that reptile. “Our friend Maximillian von Staufer will no longer be a problem. I’ve taken care of him.”
“You have?” Hugo sounded hopeful, but Susannah felt a stab of panic and clenched her fingers in Lev’s coat.
“I’ve had a message sent to him, telling him that the princess is in your hunting lodge at Krassau.”
“What?” Helga screeched, no longer amused. “But that’s where she is!”
“Indeed, my love,” Angriffer drawled. “Considerate of me, is it not? When my men ambush him, they will not need to carry him so far. He is such an ox.”
“But why…” Hugo was sputtering.
Angriffer sighed. “Be sensible. The original plan, in which you rescue the princess after her father invades—or threatens to invade—Sigmaringen may no longer be possible. The appearance of this imposter has thrown all in disarray. Even Mila is not stupid enough to believe that she has been held for weeks in your hunting lodge without your knowledge. We may have to eliminate her just to save our necks. If that becomes necessary, I would prefer to have Staufer available to take the blame as her assassin.”
Susannah came dangerously close to dropping the lamp. It was only the need to keep it steady and upright that gave her time to tamp down her fury. The sensible part of her knew that she could not physically tear Angriffer to pieces, that she was too weak, but the sensible part of her was fading fast. Every muscle in her body was tensed, ready to leap.
“But you can’t just keep a dead body sitting around until you need it!” Hugo sounded ready to explode in panic.
“Calm yourself, Hugo.” Helga seemed to have recovered her control. “Let us hear what Dieter has to propose.”
Angriffer sighed again. “Really, Hugo, you talk as if I’m as much of a fool as you—your father. I’m not going to kill him yet. I’ll just keep him in the cellar until he’s needed. And, at the same time, that will keep him out of the way while your father helps the prince make a fool of himself.”
“Yes…” Helga drew out the word. “That could work. And these imposters will be destroyed with him. Yes.”
Twenty-seven
Susannah forced herself to back away slowly, pulling Lev with her. Helga’s voice followed as Susannah turned around and ran back to the staircase, no longer caring if her footsteps made any noise in the passage.
She raced up the staircase and through her room, and burst out into the corridor. Two of Max’s men were still on guard there. She grabbed the nearest one, a slim fellow, scarcely more than a boy, with flaming red hair. “Do you know where Captain Staufer is?” she demanded.
He shook his head, wide-eyed. “No, Lady.”
“Find him,” she said. “Find him at once and bring him here. And you!” She turned to the other man, who was staring at her as well. “You go find Josef. Now!”
Then she flung back into her room and tried to think. What should she do? What if Max had already left?
She would have to go after him. There was no other choice.
In the wardrobe she had her sister’s exploring outfit, the one with the divided skirt that Elinor had worn in Italy. Elinor had told her to take it along, “just in case you have an adventure too.” Susannah had thought it ridiculous—she wasn’t the sort to have adventures, and she was hardly going to be exploring anything at a spa with Aunt Augusta. Now, however, she blessed her sister for the thought. And her brother Ned for the pocketknife he had given her. Just as a precaution, he had said. She would take that along, and also the bottle of whatever it was that the intruder had left behind. She took it out of the drawer and checked that the cork was tight.
She intended to be prepared for whatever was to come.
In a trice, she was out of her dress and out of her corset. By the time she finished dressing, Josef was knocking at the door.
She swung open the door. “Is Captain Staufer still here?”
“No, Lady, he rode off. There was a message for him…”
She interrupted with an impatient gesture. “It was a false message. He is on his way to Krassau, but it’s a trap. Angriffer’s men are waiting to ambush him. Take me to the stables. We must catch him.”
She was prepared to drag Josef down the hall, but there was no need. He did not hesitate to believe her, thank goodness. Instead, he immediately headed off, barking an order to the guard who came running toward them, the guard she had sent in search of Max.
They hurried along and turned down a staircase she had not seen before—wood, not marble, but not as steep or grimy as the servants’ stairs had been. In no time they were in the stables and three horses were being saddled. The gray mare, she assumed, was for her. The young guard was arming himself with a bow and arrows. She stumbled when she saw that. A bow and arrows? This was the nineteenth century, not the Middle Ages! She looked at Josef in surprise.
“Emil knows the forest near Krassau,” he said with a grunt. “He will make sure we do not lose the route.”
Well, that was useful, she supposed. At least Josef was armed with a rifle. She looked again. Two rifles. She had been afraid he would not take her seriously. She did not know if she shou
ld be grateful that he had listened to her—or worried that he did not seem to consider this an unexpected development.
They were out a gate at the rear of the castle before Susannah realized that Lev was accompanying them. Josef turned at her exclamation of distress but grinned. “Have no fear. If he cannot keep up with us, he will still be able to follow, and he may be of use.”
Remembering how Lev had terrified the intruder in her room, Susannah did not doubt the dog’s usefulness. Besides, the large, white shape trotting beside her was comforting.
As they plunged into the forest, she had need of comfort. These were not the shady woods of England with gentle paths kept clear for ladies’ rambles. This was the setting of an ancient folk tale, the sort of place that was inhabited by witches and trolls. Though it was still afternoon, the dense trees cut off the light so that it seemed almost like night. What would it be like when the sun had set? The darkness would then be impenetrable.
They proceeded slowly, often riding single file because the path was so narrow. Actually, it hardly deserved to be called a path. Often it seemed to be little more than an opening between trees. Emil peered ahead as if he were uncertain himself. They moved at little more than a walk. She could have gone faster on foot.
Frustrated, she longed to gallop so she might reach Max before he rode into the ambush, but she could see that would be madness in terrain like this. Reckless speed would only endanger the horses. She tried to tell herself that Max would have had to go slowly too, but she only half believed herself.
She was finding it difficult to believe anything about her present situation.
What was she doing here? How had Lady Susannah Tremaine, a very proper English lady—all the dowagers approved of her and introduced her to their grandsons, their very boring grandsons—come to be here? What was she doing riding through some foreign forest in an effort to rescue a Sigmaringen officer?
She did not do this sort of thing. She was cautious, careful—not the sort of person who went dashing off into forests. She did not recognize herself.
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