She made a little curtsy. "My name is Mary Russell, Your Grace."
The breath left his body. He only just saved himself from falling on his knees. "I see. How old are you, Mary?"
"Thirteen next month, Your Grace." Her voice was reedy but firm, holding its ground before his beastly buccaneer's face.
Thirteen next month. Ashland made a swift mental calculation.
"Step forward, Mary, and ask the duke to sit down," said Alice.
Mary stepped forward, sat down correctly on the sofa, and motioned her arm to the nearby wing chair. "Won't you sit down, Your Grace?"
He eased himself into the chair. Mary's face came into focus next to the lamp.
She was not his.
Her hair was dark, and her eyes were nearly black: the exact color and shape of the Earl of Somerton's eyes, of which Ashland had seen enough to last him a lifetime.
So that was why his wife had left so abruptly. She had become pregnant by her lover. Had thought, perhaps, that a child would be enough to hold a man like Somerton.
"Have you traveled far, Your Grace?" Mary asked him.
"Yes, I have. I arrived in town yesterday, from Yorkshire."
"I hear it is very bleak in Yorkshire."
He smiled. "It is. I think it rather suits me, don't you?"
She tilted her head. "Perhaps. But I daresay such a climate might make anyone bleak, unless one had a great many friends for company. Do you have many friends there?"
"Not nearly enough, I'm afraid, though the ones I have are very dear to my heart."
Mary nodded her dark head. "That's the important thing, of course. Have you had any tea? The cake is very good."
He spoke with her for half an hour, about her studies and about Yorkshire, about the London fog and her recent visit to Hampton Court with her governess. They touched briefly on Henry VIII and all the Annes and Catherines. He rose at last when luncheon was called.
"Will you stay and have luncheon with us, Your Grace?" asked Mary, rising, too.
"I'm afraid not. I have a number of errands, and my time here in London is limited. I have an appointment in Yorkshire next week of the utmost importance."
"I see. It was a very great pleasure to meet you, sir. I believe you are my first duke." Mary offered her hand.
Ashland took her hand with his left and shook it gravely. "I am deeply sensible of the honor, Miss Russell."
When she left, he turned to Alice. "The remittance will continue, but on no account is any of the money to be forwarded to my wife. I shall expect a full report of expenses every quarter. My solicitor will arrange payment of Miss Russell's school fees. Should you have any need of an increase in income, you may apply to me at once."
"Your Grace!"
"In the meantime, I should like you to give me my wife's current direction. I presume she remains in Europe?"
"Why, yes, sir. Of course, sir. But . . . sir, I don't think . . ."
"You will give me her address, Alice, or I shall be forced to begin inquiries. Do you understand me?"
She bowed her head. "Yes, sir."
Ashland didn't open the paper she gave him until he was safely stowed inside the hackney and crossing Putney Bridge into Fulham. He unfolded it and held it up to the meager yellow light from the window, until he could just make out the rounded black letters of his sister-in-law's copperplate handwriting.
SEVENTEEN
All I'm saying, Grimsby . . ."
"Mr. Grimsby."
"Look, I'll bloody well keep calling you Grimsby if you insist, but I'll be damned if I say Mister. It's not right." Freddie made an impatient flick of his riding crop.
"And yet, you have no difficulty employing the most offensive language in my presence," said Emilie. "Against that, a male form of address should require no effort at all." A lone snowflake landed on the tip of her nose; she resisted the urge to hold out her tongue for another. She and Stefanie used to do that, out riding in early winter, and while the gray Yorkshire moors bore no resemblance to the lush forests of the Schweinwald, the bite in the air, the unmistakable scent of coming snow, gave her exactly the same childlike thrill.
"Ha. I recall perfectly the expression that came out of your mouth last week, when you was locked out of the house. Absolute filth, Grimsby. I'm sick at the memory. And you not merely a lady, but a princess! Think of your subjects, Your Royal Highness."
"I have no subjects. My sister is the heir." She blew out a white cloud into the air.
"Right-ho. Which brings me directly to the point, now that we're finally off by ourselves. We've got to lay plans."
"Plans for what?"
"Why, for restoring you to your throne, of course!"
The horse moved comfortably beneath Emilie's seat, an easy rocking gait. The wind blew against her cheeks, the same rapacious wind as before, but she minded it less now. It was like an old friend. Even the bleak landscape felt right somehow. "I don't have a throne. And if I did, I wouldn't want to be restored to it. I hated that life. I'm grateful I escaped." As soon as she said the words, she realized they were true. She had no remaining desire to find her father's killer. She had no desire to return to her thick-walled palace existence. She missed her sisters desperately, of course, but that was all. Even dressed as a man, hiding her true identity, she felt more free, more herself, than she ever had before. In her selfish heart, she didn't want justice served.
"Oh, rubbish. What girl doesn't want to be a damned princess? The first thing, of course, is you've got to marry Pater."
Emilie nearly jumped from the saddle. "Marry your father? Are you mad?"
"In the first place, there's your royal honor to consider. I don't suppose he knows he's rogering the lost Princess Emilie of Holstein-whatever-it-is every Tuesday evening in Ashland Spa Hotel, does he?"
"Your lordship!"
Freddie tapped his temple beneath the brim of his wool hat. "I can put a few things together, Grimsby. So firstly, he's got to marry you anyway, having debauched you and all that. Secondly, you're clearly in love with him, because otherwise you wouldn't be trotting off to meet him every week. And thirdly . . ."
"I am most certainly not in love . . ."
". . . thirdly, Pater would be the most immense use in protecting you and finding those deadly assassins and all that. Imagine him going after the poor chaps with all his vengeful might, doling out justice hither and yon! They wouldn't stand a chance."
"There is a small impediment, your lordship. You forget your father is still married."
Freddie snorted. "I daresay that can be got around pretty efficiently, after twelve years of abandonment by my incomparable mother."
They walked on in silence for a moment, horses playing contentedly with their bits, saddle leather creaking in sympathy with the wind. A few more snowflakes flew by, thicker now. Emilie bent her chin into her scarf and studied the dead winter turf passing between her horse's ears.
"There's another reason." Freddie's voice cut defiantly through the air. "The last reason."
"What's that?"
"You could stay here. Not here, obviously, if all this glorious natural beauty ain't to your taste." He waved his crop to the monochrome horizon, the diagonal jags of building snow. "But the three of us, together, wherever it is. I'd even . . . I'd always rather fancied a . . ." He ducked his head, in an uncharacteristic display of embarrassment.
"A what, your lordship?"
"Well, a brother. Or even a sister. A bit late now to be a companion in mischief and all that, but still . . ." He shrugged, a sixteen-year-old's indifferent shrug, masking vulnerability.
Emilie looked up at the heavy sky and blinked her stinging eyes.
"The point is," said Freddie, more brusquely, "you've got to come clean to Pater. The longer you wait, the more he'll rant and rage. You can trust Pater, Grimsby. He'll move heaven and earth to help you, you know."
"I know." Emilie was studying the ground ahead, where a great stone formation-known to locals as the Old Lady, because it had apparently once sported a long and wart-flecked nose, before some winter frost a century ago had broken it off-loomed against the lines of snow. Was it her imagination, or did she catch a flicker of movement behind the Old Lady's right ear?
She glanced to the left, where the relative safety of the Ashland Spa road beckoned a half mile away.
"I'll help you, if you like. Warm him up a bit. Look here, Pater, have you ever imagined old Grimsby without his whiskers? He'd look a damned prime girl. Or else, That old Grimsby, what a priceless fellow. Make a fine wife, if only he were a she. That sort of thing."