“Your sister was to pay a very important visit to a member of Lord Dimsdale’s family in just a few days,” Mariana put in. “If you weren’t so busy traipsing around the estate listening to the sob stories of feckless women, you’d remember that. He’s a prince. A prince!”
Kate dropped onto her stool again and looked at her two relatives. Mariana was as hard and bright as a new ha’penny. In contrast, Victoria’s features were blurred and indistinct. Her hair was a delightful pale rose color, somewhere between blonde and red, and curled winsomely around her face. Mariana’s hair had the sharp-edged perfection of someone whose maid spent three hours with a curling iron achieving precisely the look she wanted.
“I fail to see what the postponed visit has to do with me,” Kate said, “though I am very sympathetic about your disappointment, Victoria.” And she was, too. Though she loathed her stepmother, she had never felt the same hatred for her stepsister. For one thing, Victoria was too soft-natured for anyone to dislike. And for another, Kate couldn’t help being fond of her. If Kate had taken a great deal of abuse from Mariana, the kind of affection that her stepmother lavished on her daughter was, to Kate’s mind, almost worse.
“Well,” Victoria said heavily, sitting down on a pile of gowns about the approximate height of a stool, “you have to be me. It took me a while to understand it, but Mother has it all cleverly planned out. And I’m sure my darling Algie will agree.”
“I couldn’t possibly be you, whatever that means,” Kate said flatly.
“Yes, you can,” Mariana said. She had finished her cigarillo and was lighting a second from the first. “And you will,” she added.
“No, I won’t. Not that I have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Be Victoria in what context? And with whom?”
“With Lord Dimsdale’s prince, of course,” Mariana said, regarding her through a faint haze of smoke. “Haven’t you been listening?”
“You want me to pretend to be Victoria? In front of a prince? Which prince?”
“I didn’t understand at first either,” Victoria said, running her finger over her injured lip. “You see, before Algie can marry me, we need the approval of some relative of his.”
“The prince,” Mariana put in.
“He’s a prince from some little country in the back of beyond, that’s what Algie says. But he’s the only representative of Algie’s mother’s family who lives in England, and she won’t release his inheritance without the prince’s approval. His father’s will,” Victoria confided, “is most dreadfully unfair. If Algie marries before thirty years of age, without his mother’s approval, he loses part of his inheritance—and he’s not even twenty yet!”
Very smart of Papa Dimsdale, to Kate’s mind. From what she’d seen, Dimsdale Junior was about as ready to manage an estate as the rats were to learn choral music. Not that it was her business. “The doctors will take a look at you tomorrow morning,” she told Victoria, “and then you’ll be off to see the prince. Rather like the cat looking at the queen.”
“She can’t go like that!” Mariana snapped. It was the first time that Kate had ever heard that edge of disgust applied to her daughter.
Victoria turned her head and looked at her mother, but said nothing.
“Of course she can,” Kate stated. “This sounds like a fool’s game to me. No one will believe for a moment that I’m Victoria. And even if they did, don’t you think they’d remember later? What happens when this prince stands up in the church and stops the ceremony, on the grounds that the bride isn’t the bride he met?”
“That won’t happen, if only because Victoria will be married directly afterwards, by parish license,” Mariana said. “This is the first time Dimsdale has been invited to the castle, and we can’t miss it. His Highness is throwing a ball to celebrate his betrothal, and you’re going as Victoria.”
“Why not just postpone your visit and go after the ball is over?”
“Because I have to get married,” Victoria piped up.
Kate’s heart sank. “You have to get married?”
Victoria nodded. Kate looked at her stepmother, who shrugged. “She’s compromised. Three months’ worth.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Kate exclaimed. “You hardly know Dimsdale, Victoria!”
“I love Algie,” Victoria said, her big eyes earnest. “I didn’t even want to debut, not after I saw him at Westminster Abbey that Sunday back in March, but Mother made me.”
“March,” Kate said. “You met him in March and now it’s June. Tell me that darling Algie proposed, oh, say three months ago, just after you fell in love, and you’ve kept it a secret?”
Victoria giggled at that. “You know exactly when he proposed, Kate! I told you first, after Mother. It was just two weeks ago.”
The lines between Mariana’s nose and mouth couldn’t be plumped by a miracle cream made of crushed pearls. “Dimsdale was slightly tardy in his attentions.”
“Not tardy in his attentions,” Kate said. “He’s seems to have been remarkably forward in that department.”
Mariana threw her a look of dislike. “Lord Dimsdale very properly proposed marriage once he understood the situation.”
“I would kill the man, were I you,” Kate told her.
“Would you?” She gave an odd smile. “You always were a fool. The viscount has a title and a snug fortune, once he gets his hands on it. He’s utterly infatuated with your sister, and he’s set on marrying her.”
“Fortunate,” Kate commented. She looked back at Victoria. She was delicately patting her lip over and over again. “I told you to hire a chaperone, Mariana. She could have had anyone.”
Mariana turned back to her glass without a comment. In truth, Victoria probably wasn’t for just any man. She was too soft, too much like a soggy pudding. She cried too much.
Though she was terribly pretty and, apparently, fertile. Fertility was always a good thing in a woman. Look how much her own father had despaired over his lack of a son. Her mother’s inability to have more children apparently led to his marriage a mere fortnight after his wife’s death . . . he must have been that anxious to start a new family.
Presumably he thought Mariana was as fertile as her daughter had now proved to be. At any rate, he died before testing the premise.
“So you’re asking me to visit the prince and pretend to be Victoria,” Kate said.
“I’m not asking you,” Mariana said instantly. “I’m commanding you.”
“Oh, Mother,” Victoria said. “Please, Kate. Please. I want to marry Algie. And, really, I rather need to . . . I didn’t quite understand, and, well . . .” She smoothed her gown. “I don’t want everyone to know about the baby. And Algie doesn’t either.”
Of course Victoria hadn’t understood that she was carrying a child. Kate would be amazed to think that her stepsister had even understood the act of conception, let alone its consequences.
“You’re asking me,” Kate said to her stepmother, ignoring Victoria for the moment. “Because although you could force me into the carriage with Lord Dimsdale, you certainly couldn’t control what I said once I met this prince.”
Mariana showed her teeth.
“Even more relevant,” Kate continued, “is the fact that Victoria made a very prominent debut just a few months ago. Surely people at the ball will have met her—or even just have seen her?”
“That’s why I’m sending you rather than any girl I could find on the street,” Mariana said with her usual courtesy.
“You’ll have my little doggies with you,” Victoria said. “They made me famous, so everyone will think you’re me.” And then, as if she just remembered, another big tear rolled down her cheek. “Though Mother says that I must give them up.”
“Apparently they are in my bedchamber,” Kate said.
“They’re yours now,” Mariana said. “At least for the visit. After that we’ll—” She broke off with a glance at her daughter. “We’ll give them to some deserving orphans.”
>
“The poor tots will love them,” Victoria said mistily, ignoring the fact that the said orphans might not like being nipped by their new pets.
“Who would accompany me as chaperone?” Kate asked, putting the question of Victoria’s rats aside for the moment.
“You don’t need one,” Mariana said with a hard edge of scorn, “the way you careen about the countryside on your own.”
“A pity I didn’t keep Victoria with me,” Kate retorted. “I would have ensured that Dimsdale didn’t treat her like a common trollop.”
“Oh, I suppose that you’ve preserved your virtue,” Mariana snapped. “Much good may it do you. You needn’t worry about Lord Dimsdale making an attempt at that dusty asset; he’s in love with Victoria.”
“Yes, he is,” Victoria said, sniffing. “And I love him too.” Another tear slid down her cheek.
Kate sighed. “If I am pretending to be Victoria, it will create a scandal if I appear in a carriage alone with Dimsdale, and the scandal will not attach to me, but to Victoria. In short, no one will be surprised when her child appears on an abbreviated schedule after the wedding.”
There was a moment of silence. “All right,” Mariana said. “I would have accompanied Victoria, of course, but I can’t leave her, given her poor state of health. You can take Rosalie with you.”
“A maid? You’re giving me a maid as a chaperone?”
“What’s the matter with that?” Mariana demanded. “She can sit between you in case you lose your head and lunge at Lord Dimsdale. You’ll have the rats’ maid as well, of course.”
“Victoria’s dogs have their own maid?”
“Mary-Downstairs,” Victoria said. “She cleans the fireplaces, but she also gives them a bath every day, and brushes them. Pets,” Victoria added, “are a responsibility.”
“I shall not take Mary with me,” Kate stated. “How on earth do you expect Mrs. Swallow to manage without her?”
Mariana just shrugged.
“This won’t work,” Kate said, trying to drag the conversation back into some sort of sensible channel. “We don’t even look alike.”
“Of course you do!” Mariana snapped.
“Well, actually, we don’t,” Victoria said. “I—well, I look like me and Kate, well . . .” She floundered to a halt.
“What Victoria is trying to say is that she is remarkably beautiful,” Kate said, feeling her heart like a little stone in her chest, “and I am not. Put that together with the fact that we are stepsisters related only by marriage, and there’s no more resemblance between us than any pair of Englishwomen seen together.”
“You have the same color hair,” Mariana said, dragging on her cigarillo.
“Really?” Victoria said doubtfully.
Actually, Mariana was probably right. But Victoria’s hair was cut in pretty curls around her head, in the very newest style, and fixed with a delicate bandeau. Kate brushed hers out in the morning, twisted it about, and pinned it flat to her head. She had no time for meticulous grooming. More accurately, she had no time for grooming at all.
“You’re cracked,” Kate said, staring at her stepmother. “You can’t pass me off as your daughter.”
Victoria was frowning now. “I’m afraid she’s right, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.”
Mariana had a kind of tight look about her eyes that Kate knew from long experience signaled true rage. But for once, she was rather perplexed about why.
“Kate is taller than I am,” Victoria said, counting on her fingers. “Her hair is a little more yellow, not to mention long, and we don’t have the same sort of look at all. Even if she put on my clothing—”
“She’s your sister,” Mariana said, her mouth tight, as if the copper pipe had been hammered flat.
“She’s my stepsister,” Kate said patiently. “The fact that you married my father does not make us blood relatives, and your first husband—”
“She’s your sister.”
Two
Pomeroy Castle
Lancashire
Your Highness.”
The prince in question, whose given name was Gabriel Albrecht-Frederick William von Aschenberg of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld, looked up to find his majordomo, Berwick, holding a salver. “I’ve got this unguentarium all in pieces, Wick. Speak quickly.”
“Unguentarium,” Wick said with distaste. “It sounds like a salacious item one might buy in Paris. The wrong side of Paris,” he added.
“Spare me your quibbles,” Gabriel said. “This particular jug was meant for the dead, not the living. It used to hold six small bones for playing knucklebones, and was found in a child’s grave.”
Wick bent nearer and peered at the pieces of clay scattered across the desk. “Where are the knucklebones?”
“The knuckleboned Biggitstiff threw them out. In fact, he threw this little jug out too, since the child was poor, and he is only interested in ravaging the tombs of kings. I’m trying to see whether I can identify how the top, which I don’t have, was attached. I think there were bronze rivets attached to both these pieces.” He pointed. “And the rivets were mended at least once before the unguentarium was put in the tomb, see?”
Wick looked at the pieces. “Needs mending again. Why are you bothering?”
“This child’s parents had nothing to give him to bring to the underworld but his knucklebones,” Gabriel said, picking up his magnifying glass. “Why shouldn’t that gift be honored equally with the trumpery gold Biggitstiff is after?”
“A message has arrived from Princess Tatiana’s delegation,” Wick said, apparently accepting Gabriel’s edict in regard to the knucklebones. “She is now in Belgium and will arrive on schedule. We’ve had some two hundred acceptances for your betrothal ball, among them your nephew, Algernon Bennett, Lord Dimsdale. In fact, the viscount will arrive before the ball, by the sound of it.”
“Bringing the Golden Fleece?” Gabriel’s nephew, whom he vaguely remembered as a boy with a fat bottom, had affianced himself to one of the richest heiresses in England.
“His Lordship will be accompanied by his betrothed, Miss Victoria Daltry,” Wick said, glancing at his notes.
“It’s hard to believe that Dimsdale could have garnered such a prize; perhaps she has freckles or a squint,” Gabriel said, carefully aligning the clay fragments so that he could determine where the rivets originated.
Wick shook his head. “At her debut this spring Miss Daltry was accounted one of the most beautiful women on the marriage market.” They had been in England for a matter of months, but he already had a firm grasp on relevant gossip among the aristocracy. “Her adoration for her betrothed was also universally noted,” he added.
“She hasn’t met me,” Gabriel said idly. “Maybe I should steal her away before my own bride arrives. An English Golden Fleece for a Russian one. My English is far better than my Russian.”
Wick didn’t say a word, just slowly looked from Gabriel’s hair to his feet. Gabriel knew what Wick was seeing: black hair pulled back from a widow’s peak, eyebrows that came to points over his eyes in a way that frightened some women, the shadow of a beard that never seemed to really go away. Something in his expression scared off the soft ones, the ones that thought to cuddle and wrap his hair around their fingers after sex.
“Of course, you could try,” Wick commented. “But I expect you’ll have your hands full trying to charm your own bride.”
Not his best insult, but pretty good.
“You make it sound as if Tatiana will run for the hills at the sight of me.” Gabriel knew damn well that the glimmer of ferocity in his eyes frightened ladies who were more used to lapdogs. But for all that, he had yet to meet the woman whose eyes didn’t show a slight widening, a sparkle of happiness, at the prospect of meeting a prince. They liked to have a prince under their belt.
Still, this was the first time he would be trying to charm a wife, rather than a lover. One had to assume that women took the business more seriously than they did the occasional bedd
ing.
A curse sounded in his head but died before reaching his lips. He turned back to the little pot before him. “Perhaps fortunately, my betrothed has no more choice in the matter than I do.”
Wick bowed. He left as silently as he had arrived.
Three
Yarrow House
There was a moment of cool silence in the room, like the silence that follows a gunshot when hunters are in the woods.
Victoria didn’t say anything. Kate took one look at her soft, bewildered eyes and saw that her mother’s pronouncement had flown over her head.
“Victoria is my sister,” Kate repeated.
“Yes, so you bloody well better go there and make sure her marriage goes through before she’s ruined. Because she’s your sister.”
A little pulse of relief rushed through Kate’s veins. She must have misunderstood, she had—
“She’s your half sister,” Mariana clarified, her voice grating.
“But—she’s—” Kate turned to Victoria. “How old are you?”
“You know how old I am,” Victoria said, snuffling a bit as she rubbed her lower lip. “I’m almost exactly five years younger than you.”
“You’re eighteen,” Kate said. Her heart was thumping in her chest.
“Which makes you a ripe twenty-three,” Mariana said pleasantly. “Or perhaps twenty-four. At your age, it’s easy to forget.”
“Your husband, the colonel—”
Mariana shrugged.
Kate found herself struggling to breathe. She felt as if her whole life were unfolding in front of her, all the questions she never knew she had. The shock of her father coming home, just two weeks after her mother’s funeral, and saying that he was planning to marry by special license.
Her mother lying in bed all those years, and her father popping his head in now and then to say cheerful things and toss kisses in her direction but never to sit by his wife’s side.
Because apparently he’d been sneaking off to sit with Mariana.
“I feel as if I’m missing something,” Victoria said, looking from one to the other. “Are you going to cry, Kate?”