"Yes, sir." She moved to the doorway as if in a trance.
"Alice," he said softly.
She stopped.
"Did you really think I wouldn't find out? Did you really think you could carry on forever?"
Alice whipped around. "And what would it have mattered to you if I did? Isabelle finally got what she deserved. She had you all fooled, all of you, and still you followed her about like the dogs you were, sniffing under her skirts. You couldn't help yourselves around her, could you? You never saw what she really was. You couldn't believe someone so beautiful could be . . . oh, not evil, not that, but such a child, such a selfish child. I expect you thought the earl was her first lover, did you? I expect you thought you could traipse off to India with your regiment and Isabelle could do without the attention, she could do without everybody admiring her and flirting with her. I suppose you thought she was as faithful as you were."
Ashland looked down at her. His fist clenched and unclenched at his side. "I suppose I did."
Alice turned away, took a step forward, and paused in the doorway. She said, in a lowered voice, "It wasn't you, Your Grace. What she did, why she left you. Just so you know. It was her. And I always thought she was the greatest fool alive, walking away from you."
Ashland folded his arms against his chest.
Alice looked at her feet. Her hand touched the doorjamb. "I did Mary a favor, I did. She never knew what a whore her mother was."
"No," said Ashland. "And God help me, she never will."
* * *
The windows were already dark by the time Ashland knocked on Emilie's bedroom door. It was answered by a long, thin woman with neat hair and a pair of extraordinarily bright hazel eyes.
"Ah! Miss Dingleby. May I have a moment's privacy with my fiancée?"
Miss Dingleby's eyebrows lifted. Her rosebud mouth-far too innocent, Ashland thought, but Olympia always did have a strong sense of irony-curled upward in amusement, and she glanced over her shoulder into the lamplit interior of the room.
"It's quite all right, Dingleby," came Emilie's brusque voice. "He won't ravish me, I assure you."
Miss Dingleby turned back to Ashland. "I have talked some sense into her, thank goodness. So I'd be obliged if you didn't ruin anything with your masculine blustering and all that."
"I assure you, I have no intention of ruining anything." He paused. "Have you?"
Miss Dingleby raised a single challenging eyebrow and swept past, leaving the door open a respectable pair of inches.
Ashland closed it.
He walked forward to where Emilie sat in her chair before a fine mahogany escritoire, pen in hand, lamp shining on her golden hair and brushing her delicate features. The pen trembled slightly in her fingers. Ashland's heart dropped away from his chest.
He found a nearby chair and carried it next to her and sat down, perched on the edge. The light struck her spectacles in such a way that he couldn't quite read the expression in her eyes. Expectant, perhaps. Or wary. He took her cool hand and pressed it between his fingers.
"Your Highness, I ask a boon."
TWENTY-ONE
The Marquess of Silverton blinked, removed his spectacles, wiped them with a disreputable handkerchief, and replaced them on his nose. "Good God, Grimsby. Look at you!"
Miss Dingleby adjusted the trim of Emilie's bodice by a fraction of an inch. "Not Grimsby. Her Royal Highness, the Princess Emilie of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof." She took a step back, passed a critical eye up and down Emilie's figure, and turned to Freddie. "And you will endeavor to recollect the fact, your lordship." The words your lordship dripped with scorn from her mouth.
Freddie whistled. "Regardless, that's a ripping frock you've got on, Grimsby. Has Pater seen it yet?"
"Not yet." Emilie swiveled one way and another before the mirror, hoping neither Freddie nor Miss Dingleby noticed the flush spreading rapidly over her damned telltale cheekbones.
"Then he's in for a shock tomorrow night. I do hope the poor fellow can keep his wits about him." He made a theatrical yawn, patting his mouth with one lazy palm. "I only wish I were there to see it."
"Freddie." Emilie turned and planted her hands on her elegant silken hips. "You and your sister are not to move from your father's house tomorrow. Not one step. Is that understood? The ball is a grown-up affair." She cast him her sternest Grimsby glare, communicating a wealth of meaning and warning, which could be summed up pithily as: Don't spill the beans, or else.
"Not even a turn about the garden?"
"Don't be clever. If I see one hair of your excitement-seeking head lurking about the ball, I shall . . . I shall . . ."
"Tell tales to my father?"
Emilie looked at Mary, who sat in the corner, sketching Emilie's dress in furious strokes of her pencil. "Mary, my dear, do try to make sure your brother behaves himself."
Mary raised her dark head and smiled. "Shall I lock him in his room?"
"That's the spirit." Emilie turned back to the mirror. She hadn't meant to allow herself to become close to the girl, but how could she help it? Freddie dragged his new sister everywhere, and Emilie could hardly shut out Freddie. And then, after a week or so, Mary had begun to shed her careful reserve. She began to make her clever remarks, her flashes of humor, her startling questions, and suddenly they were all laughing and talking together, and the gaping sister-shaped holes in Emilie's heart had begun to trickle full again. Ashland would walk into the room, and his furrowed brow would smooth out, and though he wouldn't say anything-he rarely said anything now, as if conversation were taxed by the word-Emilie noticed the warmth in his eye, the softening around his mouth.
She was surrounded now, a hostage to this new family peopling itself around her, laying its claim to her. The lease for a splendid double-fronted house in Eaton Square had been signed a week ago, and Mary and Freddie had just been moved in, but they still spent most of their time in Park Lane, under the vigilant eye of the Duke of Ashland.
The Duke of Ashland, who, as the society columns breathlessly reported, was so in love with his royal fiancée, he scarcely left her side.
Even to sleep.
"Well, it's dashed dull about the old place. Hardly any furniture, and no company except the servants and that old beanpole of a French governess Mary's got. Good Lord, I'm glad I'm not a girl. Governesses are a devil of a nuisance." He cast a meaning glance at Miss Dingleby, which she ignored.
"Mademoiselle Duchamps is not a beanpole," Mary said. "She has a long and elegant figure."
Emilie studied the corner of the mirror, in which half of Mary's face caught the reflection. From the window, a pale February sun revealed a distinct upward curl at the side of her mouth. Emilie smiled back. "There are always your studies, Freddie. Or had you forgotten your Oxford examinations?"
"Oxford? Who the devil cares about that anymore?"
Miss Dingleby clapped her hands. "Out, now, the both of you! The dress is quite in order, as you can see, and I must whisk it off Her Highness before she spills her tea and ruins it. Off, off!"
When Mary and Freddie had been bustled away, Miss Dingleby applied herself to the infinity of fastenings at Emilie's back.
"You're very good at that," said Emilie.
"At what? Acting as your lady's maid?"
Emilie smiled. "That, too. But I meant managing people. When I was tutoring Freddie, I found myself using your tricks. Your tone of voice."
The bodice loosened at last, and Miss Dingleby helped her out of the voluminous dress, the multitude of frothing petticoats. "You are quite ready for tomorrow's ordeal?"
"I believe so. I suppose if I can't trust you, I can't trust anybody."
"Quite true."
"Do you really think these men will strike? We've had no sign of any danger since I arrived in London."
Miss Dingleby held out an afternoon tea dress of rose chiffon. "That may mean anything. But your uncle knows what he's doing. These sorts of events tempt such organizations into the open. They offer a prestigious target in an unguarded setting, they offer crowds in which to hide, they offer numerous opportunities to infiltrate and strike. Most importantly, they offer publicity. Think of the Tsar's assassination. Think of the opera house bombing."
"Both of which were successful attacks."
Miss Dingleby attacked the buttons of the tea dress with ruthless efficiency. "But we will be prepared. Your duke has the instincts of a guard dog, and we'll have our operatives posted throughout. As long as you don't turn missish, young lady. I want no last-minute airs and vapors."