How to Tame Your Duke(3)

"I am shocked, Uncle, that a man of your stature would even consider  such a disgraceful notion." Luisa smoothed her skirts with satisfaction.

Olympia held up his hand and regarded Emilie. She sat with her back  straight and her fingers knit, thumbs twiddling each other. Her head  cocked slightly to one side, considering some distant object with her  mother's own eyes.

"Well, my dear?" Olympia said softly.

Emilie reached up and tapped her chin with one long finger. "We shall  have to cut our hair, of course," she said. "Luisa and Stefanie will  have an easier time effecting the disguise, with their strong bones, but  I shall have to wear a full beard of whiskers at least. And thank  Heaven we are not, taken as a group, women of large bosom."

"Emilie!" said Luisa, in shocked tones.

"Emilie, darling!" cried Stefanie. "I knew you had it in you!"                       
       
           



       

Olympia clapped his hands in profound relief. "There we are! The matter  is settled. We shall discuss the details in the morning. Wherever has  the tea gone? I shall have it sent to your rooms instead." He turned  around and pressed a button on his desk, a state-of-the-art electrical  bell he'd had installed just a month ago. "Ormsby will show you the way.  Tally-ho, then!"

"Uncle! You're not going to bed?"

Olympia yawned, tightened the belt on his dressing robe, and made for  the door. "Oh, but I am. Quite exhausted." He waved his hand. "Ormsby  will be along shortly!"

"Uncle!" Luisa called desperately. "You can't be serious, Uncle!"

Olympia paused with his fingertips on the door handle. He looked back  over his shoulder. "Come, my girls," he said. "You shall be well  instructed, well placed in respectable homes. You are actresses of  exceptional talent, as I have myself witnessed. You possess the dignity  and resourcefulness of a most noble family. You have, above all, my  unqualified support."

He opened the door, stretched his arm wide, and smiled.

"What could possibly go wrong?"

* * *

The Duke of Olympia did not, however, make straight for his room. He  walked in the opposite direction, down the hall toward the service  staircase at the extreme back of the house. As he descended, the  expressions of feminine outrage and excitement from the study died  slowly into the walls, until the air went still.

Miss Dingleby was waiting for him in the alcove near the silver pantry.  She made a little noise as he drew near, and stepped into the light.

"Ah! There you are, my dear," Olympia said. He looked down at her from  his great height and placed his hand tenderly against her cheek. "Won't  you come to bed and tell me all about it?"





ONE





A ramshackle inn in Yorkshire (of course)

Late November 1889

The brawl began just before midnight, as taproom brawls usually did.

Not that Emilie had any previous experience of taproom brawls. She had  caught glimpses of the odd mill or two in a Schweinwald village square  (Schweinwald being by far the most tempestuous of the three provinces of  Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, perhaps because it was the closest to  Italy), but her governess or some other responsible adult had always  hustled her away at the first spray of blood.

She watched with interest, therefore, as this brawl developed. It had  begun as the natural consequence of an ale-soaked game of cards. Emilie  had noticed the card players the moment she sat down in an exaggerated  swing, braced her elbows, fingered her itching whiskers, and called for a  bottle of claret and a boiled chicken with her deepest voice. They  played at a table in the center of the room, huddling with bowed heads  about the end as if they feared the spavined yellow ceiling might give  way at any moment: three or four broad-shouldered men in work shirts,  homespun coats slung over their chairs, and one stripling lad.

The stakes must have been high, for they played with intensity. A fine  current of tension buzzed through the humid, smoke-laden air. One man,  his mustache merging seamlessly with the thicket of whiskers along his  jaw, adjusted his seat and emitted a fart so long, so luxuriously slow,  so like a mechanical engine in its noxious resonance, the very air  trembled. A pack of men at a neighboring table looked up, eyebrows high  in admiration.

And yet his companions were so intent on the game, they couldn't be bothered to congratulate him.

At that point, Emilie had taken out a volume of Augustine in the  original Latin and made an impressive show of absorption. Travelers, she  had discovered early in today's journey from London, tended to avoid  striking up conversations with solitary readers, especially when the  book's title encompassed multiple clauses in a foreign language, and the  last thing Emilie needed was an inquisitive traveling companion: the  kind who asked one impertinent questions and observed one's every move.  St. Augustine was her shield, and she was grateful to him. But tonight,  at the bitter end of her journey into deepest Yorkshire, that  godforsaken wilderness of howling wind and frozen moor, she could not  focus her attention. Her gaze kept creeping over the edge of the volume  to the table beyond.

It was the boy, she decided. Like her, he seemed out of place in this  stained and battered inn, as if-like her-he had sought it out over  higher-class establishments in order to avoid his usual crowd. He sat at  a diagonal angle from her, his left side exposed to her gaze,  illuminated by the roaring fire nearby. He was not much more than  sixteen; possibly not even that. His pale face was rimmed with spots of  all sizes, and his shoulders were almost painfully thin beneath a long  thatch of straw-colored hair. He alone had not taken off his coat; it  hung from his bones as if from an ill-stuffed scarecrow, dark blue and  woven from a fine grade of wool. He regarded his cards with intense  concentration behind a pair of owlish spectacles.                       
       
           



       

Emilie liked his concentration; she liked his spots and his long  fingers. He reminded her of herself at that age, all awkward limbs and  single-minded focus. Without thinking, she pushed her own spectacles  farther up the bridge of her nose and smiled.

The boy was clearly winning.

Even if the stacks of coins at his side were not steadily growing into  mountains, Emilie could not have mistaken the scowls of his companions,  the shifting in seats, the sharp smacks with which they delivered their  stakes to the center of the table. Another round had just begun, and the  dealer passed the cards around with blinding swiftness, not to waste a  single instant of play. Each face settled into implacability; not a  single mustache twitched. One man glanced up and met Emilie's eyes with  cold malevolence.

She dropped her gaze back to her book. Her wine and chicken arrived in a  clatter of ancient pewter, delivered by a careless barmaid with clean,  apple red cheeks and burly fingers. Emilie set down the book and poured  the wine with a hand that shook only a little. The coldness of the man's  gaze settled like a fist in her chest.

Emilie concentrated on the ribbon of wine undulating into her glass, on  the chilly smoothness of the bottle beneath her fingers. Her wineglass  was smudged, as if it had seen many other fingers and very little soap.  Emilie lifted it to her lips anyway, keeping all her fingertips firmly  pressed against the diamond pattern cut into the bowl, and took a hearty  masculine swallow.

And nearly spat it back.

The wine was awful, rough and thin all at once, with a faint undertone  of turpentine. Emilie had never tasted anything so wretched-not even the  cold boar's heart pie she'd been forced to eat in Huhnhof Baden two  years ago, as the guest of honor at the autumn cornucopia festival. Only  duty had seen her through that experience. Chew and swallow, Miss  Dingleby had always instructed her. A princess does not gag. A princess  chews and swallows. A princess does not complain.

The wine felt as if it were actually boiling in Emilie's mouth. Was that  even possible? She held her breath, gathered her strength, and  swallowed.

It burned down her throat, making her eyes prickle, making her nostrils  flare. The atmosphere in the room, with its roaring fire and twenty  perspiring men, pressed against her forehead with enough force to make  her brow pearl out with perspiration. Except that princesses did not  perspire; even princesses in exile, disguised as young men. She stared  up at the ceiling, studied the wooden beam threatening her head, and let  gravity do its work.

Her stomach cramped, recoiled, heaved, and settled at last with a  warning grumble. A buzz sounded from somewhere inside her spinning ears.