He did as I said, and we hastened down the narrow staircase into the kitchen. Ellen stirred her pot and brushed away a bit of damp hair. Stockton looked up from chopping potatoes, wearing that increasingly frequent crease between his brows that came on when he noticed I'd fallen into hot water.
I laughed and gestured to my companion. “This is our general, Lord Humphries.”
Ellen nodded, wordless. Much help she and Stockton were when I was trying to be humorous. “As you know, he gave me the funds to buy the things I’ll need if I’m to pass for a royal.” I addressed myself to Lord Humphries then, saying, “I shopped this morning.”
Lord Humphries nodded. “Hallelujah. You look like a drudge in that color.”
“Thank you, godfather.”
“Do you really have arthritis or was my niece lying?”
“Laureldina is the picture of honesty.”
My sarcasm met with an answering glint in Lord Humphries’s eyes, and he stretched both arms before clapping his massive hands together. “What a lark, booting Auguste off the throne just before his Accession.”
I garnished Ellen’s quail with a few pinches of parsley and hurried them onto a tray, sending Stockton upstairs to feed the guests. “Are you satisfied?”
Lord Humphries leaned against the butcher-block table and smirked. “With you? Of course. It’s obvious you’re Blenheim to the bone. Actually, I wondered when you would put the pieces together. Either you were stupid or Laureldina told her little lies with more cunning than I gave her credit for.”
“What pieces? You mean about my father being a fake?”
“Aye.” When my self-appointed godfather said the word, one eye drooped in a sardonic wink. “And the other things.”
Much though I wished to appear omniscient, I was curious. “What things?”
“Auguste’s parentage.” Lord Humphries took a knife from the table and tossed it in the air, firelight from the range catching on its steel blade. He laid it aside with care and crossed his arms over his chest. “Wasn’t this a pleasant little family dinner?”
He studied me, watching the effect of this little speech, and the words hung empty in the quail-scented warmth of the kitchen. Ellen made small scraping sounds with her spoon against the bowl of creamed carrots, and my gaze followed the repetitive motion. I felt like a clod. What was I supposed to get from that cryptic change of subject?
And then it pierced me: family dinner. Auguste. Laureldina!
My heart thudded to a careening halt, and I gasped for air and comprehension, wishing the floor would crack open and gobble me. “Do you mean to tell me that the prince is my . . . stepbrother? He’s Laureldina’s son?” I dropped onto one of the empty crates. “And I’m in love with him?”
“Ah, now you admit it.” Lord Humphries chuckled and waved his hand at my harmless snarl. “Oh, now where’s the real harm in that? Your places were swapped, as you suspected all along.”
“Please explain.”
Lord Humphries lounged away from the table and squatted at my side. Though my head drooped, I could see him very well from this angle. His composure needled me. “Alis, promise not to bite me.”
“Bite you?”
“You’re a vixen and you're peeved.”
I snapped to attention at this remark and summoned my most imperial tone. “Gallant Knight of Hell’s outer rim, wouldst thou deign to enlighten me?”
“Good girl.” He patted my knee and stood, hands clasped behind his back. “Your father and mother are the king and queen.”
“Are you certain?”
“Please don’t interrupt. I'm quite sure: I managed the transaction.”
“You—” But I stopped at his upraised finger.
“This evening is not the first time we’ve met. You were no more than a week old when I lugged you in a padded fish trap all the way from Weircannon to Cock-on-Stylingham. A puny thing with a lusty cry and sharp fists with which you insisted on banging me. I really am your godfather; King Henri made me so at your birth. Of course he was mildly drunk at the time and probably thought I was the Bishop, but one doesn’t care so much about these things. You were three days old when they decided they’d rather have a prince.”
“You put it all so coldly.” The chill of it seeped through my bones and into my marrow. I’d been given up for the sake of public opinion.
Ellen rolled her eyes and dried her hands on a rag. “Don’t be upsetting Alis.”
“Forgive me, dear lady,” Lord Humphries said with a sparking cast of his grey eyes in her direction, “but my nature is blunt, and I never tamper with it. Let me continue, and we’ll have done in a second. The thing plays out like this: A prince was more pleasing to the people of Ashby, so when your father’s cousin caught the eye of an unprincipled Lord of State—”
“Laureldina is the king’s cousin?”
“Aye.” The lid closed halfway over his eyes again. “This unprincipled lord got Laureldina with child and seemed to forget all his vows to wed her, though he was more than willing to bed her.” Lord Humphries looked around as if for commendation on this witticism, but I was not in the mood to fabricate laughter. My godfather tucked his chin and strode up and down the kitchen. “This occurrence left the king with a tangle of political yarn: Would it do for his lovely cousin to waltz about bearing other men’s children? No, of course not. What was there to do then but fabricate a marriage for Laureldina and offer to raise her child as the royal heir in exchange for her rearing of you? Thus the kingdom was saved from an expensive revolution, your stepmother’s reputation was saved from demise, and you, my little harpy, were saved from being murdered by an angry mob.”
“Oh my.” My brain was a sailors’ knot. “No one will believe this.”
Lord Humphries dipped his finger in Ellen’s creamed carrots and licked it with a considering expression. “Rather tasty. They don’t have to, dear girl. I’m rich, Auguste doesn’t want the throne, and I can produce the real birth certificate if King Henri makes a stir. The people won’t mind a change. They’re growing bored with the idea of Auguste. My nephew is clever enough to see that this is the only way to keep from the same revolution he feared.”
I wove my fingers in and out of one another. “Sorry to be thick, but who’s your nephew?”
“Thick as fog. The king, little princess. If Laureldina is my niece, and the king is her cousin, then that makes him my nephew. Haven’t you studied genealogy?”
“Not extensively.”
“‘Not extensively,’ she says with the composure of an angel. God save us.” He whipped about and gained the stairway then stalked back and jabbed a finger under my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes if I didn’t fancy a puncture wound.
“You are to study your real lineage till you know every twig and leaf on the family tree,” he said. “Memorize the most influential of your enemies and the fastest of your allies. Live with me for the next few weeks—don’t worry, I shan’t let Laureldina interfere—and you are not to blab this to Auguste. He doesn’t know.” Lord Humphries removed his finger and passed his hand over his eyes. “It’s a messy affair.” His lips pulled back in wolfish grin. “But the messier the affair the better, I say. Pack your things, madam. You are the official ward of Lord Humphries of Sandisturn. I have two weeks to make you presentable.”
Lord Humphries wriggled his fingers in my direction and disappeared up the stairs as suddenly as if he’d been a fairy godfather come to spirit me off.
I was still as stone. After a stretch of time during which I existed rather than lived, I gathered a shred of energy and stood. “It’s happening,” I muttered. “I’m going to take the throne.”
“You shouldn’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched,” Ellen said with a fond smile.
“My, aren’t you just the essence of edification?” I pinched the bridge of my nose and wondered if this was how it felt to be eaten from the inside out.
9
Auguste returned to the palace in such a high hum
or, he felt he could almost tolerate Belkin if he’d stick his pale nose into the room.
He'd seen Alis—knew where she lived and how she was treated—and his royal blood burned to know what it must be like to have that wretched Laureldina Carlisle-woman for a stepmother. He approved wholeheartedly of Lord Humphries’s scheme to keep Lady Alis at his own house for the duration of the Season. There Alis would be out of reach of her awful relatives, and Auguste could certainly find time to take her driving if she’d consent. And, aside from the fact that he was a royal, he thought his chances none too shabby; he thought he’d seen a certain encouraging spirit in the way she looked at him.
Auguste continued in this buoyant mood for the better part of the next week. In that time he threw himself so wholly into the issues of State that his father came to him over breakfast.
“My dear boy,” he said, pumping Auguste’s hand. “I’m proud of the way you’ve been handling your affairs of late.”
Auguste looked up from one of Belkin’s neatly scrawled list of minutes and smiled. “Thank you, Father.”
King Henri took one of the decorative rapiers from the wall and fiddled with the basket. “May I ask . . . what occasioned this sudden change?” He drew the blade from its sheath and stabbed an imaginary opponent.
Auguste stiffened in defense. He didn’t want everyone knowing about Alis. A tender, young love like this wasn’t the sort of thing one talked of in the conversational tone used for other, less important things like the weather or which courtier had recently fallen prey to highway robbery. But life at home would be easier if his parents would stop inviting foreign dignitaries to parade their daughters before him in hopes of striking a match.
He sighed. “As a matter of fact I . . . I have chosen a young lady.”
“You have? Oh, Auguste!” His mother, the queen, swooped in from a side passage, and for once Auguste was rather angry with the brilliant man who had designed his personal method of escape. What right did his mother have to use it?
“Mother, yes, I have.” He suffered her kisses and ran his hand through his hair to stand it on end once she’d finished.
The queen put her arm around King Henri’s waist and turned to Auguste, beaming. “Well, tell us about her! Who is she?”
“Not at present, Mother. You don’t know her, and the poor girl doesn’t even know I have chosen her as the woman I want to spend my life with.” That bit of the predicament nettled him. He was in love, he knew. But if she didn’t know it—or, worse still, refused to reciprocate the feelings—what was a fellow to do? “I wouldn’t want to embarrass her or make her feel pressed into a marriage.”
King Henri nodded and looked so much like Alis with the expression that Auguste groaned and ruffled his hair again.
“What do you like about her, Auguste?” his father asked. “Love isn’t just admiration, y’know. What’s it about Lady Mystique that caught your heart?”
Auguste thumbed through a list of the tiny things he loved about Alis and shrugged. “She doesn’t seem to want to make anyone fall in love with her. She doesn’t worry about being lovable . . . and that makes her all the more so.”
King Henri swung the rapier in his hand then returned it to its mounting on the wall. “Ah, one of your virtuous girls who’ll never kiss you unless asked and'll hardly tell you the time of day, much less talk to you.”
Auguste thought of his Alis against this picture and chuckled. “Nothing like. You’ll meet her soon enough. I can’t wait forever.”
King Henri strode to the desk and stuffed all of Auguste’s papers in the drawer then clapped him on the shoulder. “What are you doing looking at matters of state at a time like this? Go chase down your silly bride, and the sooner the wedding the better, I say.”
“Be gentle and quick with her, Auguste,” his mother added. “Girls don’t like to do difficult things.”
Auguste came to the queen and kissed her cheek, restored to good humor. “Such as?”
“Choosing whom to marry and staging murders and robbing banks. Oh, Auguste.” Smiling fondly, she patted his chest. “Don’t be a gander. The most difficult thing for a girl is to sit alone wondering if she’s the only one who has feelings. Go tell her everything, and do be careful going out. I’d hate to see you killed just as you’re starting to act like a normal prince.”
Auguste saddled Feather-Fellow and pelted to Sandisturn, Lord Humphries’s mansion on the edge of Weircannon. At the massive door he threw himself from the saddle and barged through to the interior of the house, knowing Humphries would care little how he announced himself.
“Humphries!” he bellowed when he gained the entrance of the great library where Humphries could always be found. Auguste wondered where Alis might be and if he’d get to take her driving or if she’d say something put-offish and make him cross. The jolting crack of a pistol disarmed him until Auguste saw the noise had been made by Lord Humphries snapping together the covers of a ponderous folio.
“Come in, Auguste, and don’t drag your feet about it. We’re busy brewing an especially nice batch of treason.”
Auguste stepped into the room and found Humphries and his own beloved crowded over a dusty volume. Alis’s finger traced the lines of a family chart much like the ones Auguste had been made to study with his tutor long ago. He smiled at the pucker between her dark brows.
Humphries sauntered over and clouted Auguste between his shoulder blades. “What business is so pressing that you break in upon my lair?”
Auguste beat a tattoo on the table with his riding crop and willed Humphries to understand so he wouldn’t have to outright ask for an interview with Alis. He watched a spasm of humor pass over the man’s face; then Humphries dragged the book of bloodlines from under Alis’s nose.
“It appears His Highness would like to speak with you, my girl. I’ll just be in my alcove.” Humphries saluted and took passage up a tortuous little staircase toward a balcony to the right of where they stood.
Auguste thrashed at nothing with his riding crop then crossed his hands behind his back, rocking on his toes. Jove, this was harder than he’d expected!
“Ummm . . . Alis?”
10
I loved that silly beggar.
There was no getting around the fact now that I was in his presence again and remembering his dogged service with the soup tureen after hearing Laureldina invent infirmities for me. I loved him. I had not overlooked my inconsistency, but I had found time to think and remember that Auguste was really innocent of each wrongdoing I'd piled at his door. Prejudices removed, I now stared down the throat of a bewildering case of lovesickness. My own love for a man I would prefer to view as my foe.
Auguste waited for me to answer his halting “Alis?” with something clever, but this fresh love for him could not trump my longer-ingrained love of mischief. I wanted this moment of absurd bashfulness on his part to last forever. Had Auguste any idea how adorable he looked while rocking back and forth on his toes like a schoolboy brought forward for exams?
“Are you here on business, Your Highness?” I began to trim a feather pen in order to hide my amusement.
“Business? Ah—no.” He took his ridiculous riding crop from behind his back and fingered the braided leather. “I was wondering . . . Oh, dash it all, Alis. You know I can’t speak to women.”
“I’ve noticed.” This time I graced him with laughter, and the surprise on his face was worth my cruelty.
“You’re happy to see me,” he whispered with a grin that showed two dimples I’d never seen before scoring either side of his mouth.
I put the back of my hand against my mouth to stifle another laugh; I always laughed at the wrong moments, but that was my nature. “Yes, Auguste, I am happy to see you.”
He tossed the riding crop onto the table and came around to my side, taking my hand in his. “Please don’t interrupt me, because once I’ve begun I can’t stop or I’ll never try it again. Lady Alisandra Carlisle, you have captivated me: heart, soul, st
omach, and all the rest.”
“Stomach?”
“Well, perhaps not that. I haven’t tasted your cookery yet.”
“Oh, you have.” I tossed my head. “The soup was mine.”
“Stomach too, then. I’m not much of a prince—ask Mother or Father or anyone—but I think I’m being perfectly honest when I say I make more than a decent man. I’ll go away and never bother you again if you say you don’t want me to love you, but it’ll be deuced hard. What I mean to say is: Alis Carlisle, will you be my bride?”
I had never been so eager to agree to any proposition in my life. But, for me, honesty had to come before love, for love, in its purest essence, is honesty. Hang Lord Humphries’s caution not to tell Auguste about our little plot. He’d just have to chump it.
I patted Auguste’s arm and drew him toward the window at the back of the library. “My answer will come shortly, but before anything else you must know this one rather awkward thing about us: I have planned to take your throne from the day I was old enough to know who I was. Or was not, rather. I have come to Weircannon with the intent of claiming my rights, never thinking to find you anything like passable.”
“Your rights?” Auguste’s thunderous brows rumpled together like great black caterpillars. “D’you mean to tell me you have a legitimate claim to the throne?”
“I’m the king’s daughter,” I said with a nervous chuckle.
Auguste pushed away from me. “You’re my sister!” His tone had in it the desperate groan of a speared boar.
I grabbed his arm and, being one inch the taller, managed to drag him near again. “It is not so, thank heaven. I’m you, and you’re me. I mean, I am really your parents’ daughter and you . . . well . . . you belong to . . .”
“That terrible Carlisle woman?” He looked positively battered, poor soul. “That Laureldina-piece?”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and smiled. “We were swapped at birth because the people wanted a prince. Don’t fret, dear. Lord Humphries will be dreadfully cross with me after he put forward all the money and dragged out old favors from the more sprightly gentry, but . . . I don’t care about the throne for myself anymore. Truly, darling! Besides, if I marry you, I’ll still be queen. We can just skip over all the unpleasantness completely.”
Five Glass Slippers: A Collection of Cinderella Stories Page 20
