An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(100)

“She was a remarkable woman,” I told her. “I wish I had known her better.”

“She would not have liked you much in the end,” Pompeia said firmly. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a grin. “But only because she was sometimes wary of kindred spirits. And you, Miss Speedwell, are like my granddaughter—an uncommon woman.”

I grinned. “I am glad you were able to come, although I wish the circumstances had been more pleasant.”

Her steely brows rose. “Why? Death is part of life, child. It is not the end. It is not even the middle. It is merely a doorway. Alice is no further away from me than if she had stepped into the next room.”

“You are a philosopher,” Stoker told her.

“I am an old woman,” she corrected. “And I have neither the time nor the patience for pretense.” She looked up at him with an assessing eye. “I am also a connoisseur of good-looking men, and you, my dear boy, are an extraordinarily attractive one. Now, wheel me over to where they are pouring more of this champagne and I will teach you a thing or two about women.”

He did as she told him, putting his head close to hers as he refreshed her glass. I was still watching them when the princess moved to my elbow.

“Should you stand so near me?” I asked softly. “Someone else might notice the resemblance and surmise what we have been up to this week.”

She looked down the length of her regal nose. “I am taller and my jewels are much better,” she said, not unkindly. “I do not think we will be found out. Tell me, did you enjoy playing at being a princess?”

I considered for a moment. “Not really. It is a great deal of work and very little freedom.”

“Ah,” she said, smiling gravely. “You understand me. Few people do. Alice saw the cage for what it is. Gilded and studded with diamonds, but it is still a cage. That is what made her such a good friend,” she added, her gaze drifting to Alice’s portrait.

“Friend?” I asked gently.

She caught her breath but did not look at me.

“I understand,” I told her.

She canted her head, giving me a thoughtful smile. “I think that you do. Our relationship was not one I could ever acknowledge openly, you understand. Such a thing is not possible here in England. In the Alpenwald, it would be utterly unthinkable. But she was the love of my life.”

“That is why you could not bring yourself to agree to marry Maximilian,” I murmured. “Because your heart lay elsewhere.”

“How did you know?”

“I found the sketch—tucked under the endpaper of Alice’s ledger. The sketch was illuminating and clearly drawn by someone who loved you intimately.”

She closed her eyes, briefly, and an expression of pain flickered across her face. When she opened her eyes again, she had recovered herself.

“Well, I will not be the first monarch to put aside my youthful love and marry for reasons of state,” she said, turning a heavily jeweled betrothal ring around on her finger.

“Maximilian?” I was aghast, but Gisela was matter-of-fact.

“The wedding is to be in the spring. I will advance him the money he requires to pay his gambling debts and he will spend the next few months proving himself to me. Given how grateful he is for my forgiveness and his own embarrassment at his actions, he will be entirely biddable as a consort.”

“But after all he has done—”

She turned to me, and there was a worldliness in her gaze that spoke to long experience of the failures and foibles of men. “Miss Speedwell, you have known Maximilian a few short days. I have known him all of his life. He is a good man. He just does not know it yet. Responsibility will be the making of him, I will see to it.”

“He put a threat into a box of chocolates for a fright,” I argued. “And he arranged for a bomb to be thrown at you.”

“A silly note and a firecracker,” she replied with a curl of her lip. “He has told me all about his debts, and I can assure you his travels will never again take him to Deauville. I will pay what is owed, and that will be an end to the matter.”

“I can only say that you are the best judge of the duke’s character,” I said, my voice unenthusiastic to my own ears. She smiled.

“Do not forget, Miss Speedwell, he kept my secret when I asked him to. When I had need of him, real need, he was as stalwart a champion as anyone could wish. He pretended to have a tendresse for Alice so that she could stay in the Alpenwald without anyone growing suspicious. And I turned to him again when I decided to steal the badge and the rope from here,” she said softly, her eyes lighting with amusement. “He proved a rather better housebreaker than I might have expected. And then when I went to Pompeia, he told no one where I had gone.”

I blinked at her. “He swore he did not know,” I began.

“Oh, he knew. And he told no one, just as I asked of him. For a long while he even pretended to be courting Alice in order to throw off any possible suspicion that she came to the Alpenwald to see me. He has been a good friend, and he will make me a good husband,” she said firmly.

“Will you be happy with such a choice?”

She regarded me in obvious surprise. “Happy? I am a princess. It is not my place to be happy. It is my place to govern. And I will do so as Alice and I discussed. I will bring my country into the new century with new ideas. There will be resistance to our progress, and I am prepared for that,” she added, her gaze steely. “My own personal happiness matters nothing when weighed against the well-being of my people.”