"Discretion and loyalty, Lucy. Do you possess these qualities?"
"Aye, ma'am."
"Good, then." Emilie turned back to the mirror. "Now if you'll help me with these shoes. I can't seem to find my feet amongst all these petticoats."
The door opened again while Lucy's head was still buried under Emilie's skirts.
"Dear me." Miss Dingleby set down a tray on the desk. "Have we lost the poor girl already?"
Lucy emerged, somewhat disheveled. "Ma'am?"
"Never mind. Emilie, my dear, I have prepared you a batch of my special elixir. Calms the nerves, refreshes the senses." Miss Dingleby picked up one of the glasses from the tray and held it out to her.
"I've told you already. My nerves are calm enough."
"Nonetheless." Miss Dingleby jiggled the glass. The light reflected in tiny wavelets across her face, making her irises appear to shift color to green and back again.
"Not just now, Dingleby. I'm not a bit thirsty."
Miss Dingleby sighed and replaced the glass. "Now, look at you. You really must remove those spectacles, my dear. It's your engagement party. Your duke awaits you below; the Prince of Wales himself is among the guests." She walked to Emilie, took off the spectacles, and folded them with care. "You see?"
"I don't, as a matter of fact. That is the point of the spectacles."
"Ashland will be by your side the entire evening. You have no need of perfect eyesight. Really, you must look your best, for his sake. You do want him to be proud of you, don't you?"
"His Grace will be proud of her, with or without t'spectacles," said Lucy. "And brains is heaps more important nor beauty, me mum always said."
"Why, thank you, Lucy," said Emilie. "How very flattering."
"Dear me. It seems the household staff in Yorkshire are encouraged to have opinions." Miss Dingleby smiled, a faint stretching of her perfect rosebud lips. She picked up the glass of elixir, her own private recipe. "Come, now. You must have a drink. You'll find yourself much refreshed."
Emilie took the glass and held it up to the light. It was pink in color and rather cloudy in its fine crystal tumbler, reminding her oddly of the thick fog drifting off the river last night. A hint of grapefruit tickled her nose. Miss Dingleby had always propounded the merits of grapefruit. She had insisted on each princess eating a half, carefully sectioned and without sugar, for breakfast every morning, regardless of season. The governess had consumed the remaining half herself; she hated waste of any kind.
The smell of the grapefruit wound through Emilie's nostrils, recalling all those mornings about the table in the breakfast room, unsweetened fruit poised expectantly on her plate, the routine and formal beginning to every routine and formal day. Each hour passing by like the drip of rain on a window, exactly like the one before. The smell, the memory itself, made her feel faintly ill.
"Come along, then," said Miss Dingleby, her hazel eyes bright in her sharp face. She put one finger to the base of the glass and nudged it to Emilie's mouth. "Bottoms up."
The nausea welled up from Emilie's belly. Saliva filled her mouth. She swallowed hard and put down the glass on the dressing table with a distinct crash.
"I think I'd rather not," she said.
TWENTY-FOUR
The footman stood at attention outside the Duke of Olympia's private study, looking rather like a black-and-white guard dog.
"Why, Lionel," said Emilie. "I see you've been pressed into duty this evening as well."
"Your Highness." He inclined his head gravely. His face remained expressionless.
"I should be grateful, Lionel, if you'd step aside and announce me to Their Graces at once."
At this, a hint of pain touched Lionel's grave face. "I am under orders, Your Highness, not to allow anyone inside t'room."
"Pish," said Emilie. "Or posh. Whatever it is. I am the Princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, a personal friend of the Kaiserin herself, niece to the Duke of Olympia, and affianced wife of the Duke of Ashland, whose persons you presently guard. I assure you, you are fully authorized to open that door to me."
"Your Highness . . ."
"Not to pull rank, of course," she added.
"Your Highness . . ."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Lionel. For old times' sake, if nothing else."
Lionel hesitated, sighed, and reached for the door handle.
The two men inside the room bolted to their feet at her entrance, though she had eyes only for the Duke of Ashland: impossibly tall, fearfully immaculate in his white knee breeches and his tailcoat of blackest black. His white satin waistcoat gleamed against the starched pleats of his shirtfront. Her eyes drifted upward along the broad reach of his formidable shoulders and landed at last on his blurred face, his rigid jaw, his black mask, his cropped white hair, his icy blue eye open wide as he took her in.
"My dear," said the Duke of Olympia, dimly, from some other world entirely unconnected with the one in which she currently existed, "you look beautiful." He was next to her, he was kissing her hand, she was murmuring something polite, while the image of Ashland burned in perfect photographic negative in her brain.
Her dream-uncle took her hand and drew her across the room. "My dear fellow, I give you my niece," he said, and placed her hand within the broad palm of the Duke of Ashland, which swallowed it up whole.
"Your Highness." As he bowed before her she caught a glimpse of the tiny white triangle of his handkerchief poised correctly in his waistcoat pocket, and she forgot her own name.
"My dear, you're blushing," said Olympia. "Have you no loving words for your husband-to-be?"
Loving words? She pulled her eyes up from his handkerchief, from the memory of last night's handkerchief, and met Ashland's stern gaze.
Dear God. This matchless man, shimmering with controlled power, had been locked in frantic sexual congress with her. Last night. In a darkened carriage.
The sounds, the scents flooded back in her brain. The bounce of the carriage, the slick thrust of his body into hers. The filthy words he'd poured into her ear. The jerk of his hips as he lost himself into his handkerchief.
His handkerchief.
His voice, deep and muscular. "Emilie, where are your spectacles?"
She made a clearing little shake of her head. "In my room. I was told that such things are unsuitable for balls." She managed a smile. "I am to look my best, after all."
Ashland looked down at her, unblinking. "If you'll excuse me," he said, and left the room.
"Wherever has he gone?"
Olympia spread his hands. "I haven't the faintest notion."
Ashland returned in under a minute, spectacles in hand, and fitted them to her face with infinite tenderness. "Much better."
A stinging sensation invaded Emilie's eyes. She fought it back. Princesses did not cry, certainly not in front of others. "Thank you, Your Grace. Uncle, may I have a private word with my fiancé?" The word fiancé seemed to swell with intimacy in the lamplit room.
"My dear, our guests will be arriving within minutes . . ."
Ashland's voice cracked above her. "Her Highness wishes a moment of my time, sir."
A weary sigh from Olympia. "Very well. I beg you not to abuse the furniture."
He left in a flash, before Emilie had time to catch his meaning and blush anew.
"Well! Why on earth would he say such a thing?"
Ashland chuckled. "Something to do with the expression on your face, I imagine."
She looked up, and his gaze came into brilliant focus: no longer glacial, but warm and amused. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Really? Because, if I'm not mistaken, I was thinking the same thing you were. The same thing I've been thinking about since I woke this morning." His voice slid downward into an entirely new range, somewhere between a growl and a purr. "You, straddling my lap last night, shivering as you took me inside you."
"Sir!"
He took a step closer. "The carriage bouncing us together as we shagged each other silly. You telling me to shove my big . . ."
"Sir! The footman is just outside the door!"
". . . harder and faster . . ."
"I said that?"
"You did." He wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her right up against his pristine black-and-white body. "Do you know what I think, sweetheart?"