An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(38)

She signaled to Yelena, who fastened the earrings to my ears the old-fashioned way, by means of narrow silk ribbons tied around the ear to hold the weight of sapphires the size of cherries. They swung heavily against my neck, almost touching the necklace she clasped about my throat. The last piece to go on was the tiara, nestled into the arrangement of plaits. I poked it idly with a finger, watching in concern as it wobbled a little.

“How on earth am I to keep it steady?” I asked.

The baroness reached for her chatelaine, extracting a threaded needle. She advanced upon me, and without a word, she stitched the tiara into my hair, whipping the needle around the base of the coronet and through one of the false plaits. When she was finished, she gave the tiara a hearty, painful tug. “There,” she pronounced in satisfaction. “It will sit as it should.”

I could scarcely turn my head for the combined weight of the wigs and jewels. “You will soon accustom yourself to it,” she assured me. “The more you wear it, the less you will notice it.”

“Luckily it is only for tonight,” I replied. The baroness said nothing but turned to Yelena, signaling to her to pack away the various cosmetics as the baroness herself locked away the jewel cases.

“It is only for tonight,” I pressed.

The baroness gave me a thin smile. “We have a saying in the Alpenwald, Fraulein. Plans are jokes written by men for God’s amusement.”

“That is hardly reassuring,” I told her.

“It sounds better in German.”





CHAPTER





11


The baroness carried on with her preparations by going to the bed, smoothing over the folds of the gown that Yelena had laid out, straightening the various ribbons and laces. She handled the princess’s things respectfully, reverently almost.

My eyes fell to a large gilded box on the dressing table, the wares of one of our most exclusive chocolatiers, I realized. The baroness’s attention never left the clothing she was inspecting, but nothing escaped her.

“You must help yourself, Miss Speedwell—but do so now if you wish a chocolate. It will not be possible once you have begun to dress.”

I lifted the lid of the box to find a selection of violet and rose creams—Stoker’s favorites.

“These are rather too rich for me,” I said politely, thinking of the delicacies Julien had pressed upon me during luncheon. “Would you care for one, Baroness?”

The baroness’s nostrils flared in an expression akin to outraged horror, but she managed a polite refusal. “This is not possible, Fraulein. It is not my place to eat with my princess unless I am invited.”

“But I am not your princess,” I pointed out. “And I have invited you.”

She drew herself up, her posture impeccably straight. “I think it best if I treat you as I would Her Serene Highness in order to preserve this masquerade.”

The baroness bent again to her task.

“You are very fond of your princess,” I ventured.

She carefully plucked a bit of fluff from the skirt of the gown before replying. “I have been in the service of the Crown all my life. It is my honor to serve.”

“How is it that all of you speak such good English?”

“The princess’s great-grandmother was English, one of your own princesses—Sophia Amelia, a sister of your King George III, the poor mad one,” the baroness said as she moved a pair of evening slippers exactly perpendicular to the end of the bed.

I had known that one of King George’s sisters had married the Danish king and had a very bad time of it—husband run insane, lover beheaded, early death from fever, that sort of thing—but I had not realized any other of his relations had married onto the Continent. He was my great-great-grandfather, but I had scarcely given him a thought other than as the sad old man who had lost the colonies and himself gone mad, ending his life stone deaf and blind to boot, wandering around Windsor Great Park in his nightgown and talking to the oaks. It gave one pause to realize such possibilities were lurking in the family tree.

“Was your English princess happy in the Alpenwald?” I asked.

The baroness blinked. “Happy? What do you mean?”

“Simply that,” I said. “Was she content to live so far from home? Did she love her husband? Her children?”

The questions seemed to put her at a loss and she struggled to answer. “I do not know how to reply to this, Fraulein. It is not for princesses to be happy. Their duty is to rule, to set an example.”

It sounded ghastly, I decided. “Did she have a say in the marriage or was she simply shipped off?”

“Shipped off?” The idiom seemed to puzzle her.

“Yes, carted to the Alpenwald like so much fruit for sale,” I said, a trifle tartly. “It is a barbaric custom, the exchanging of royal daughters in the manner of livestock trading for the purpose of sealing treaties. Was that her lot?”

“There was a friendship established between our two nations,” the baroness admitted. “But this was a good thing. Your kings named George brought German values to England. We understand that.”

“And did the princess bring English values to the Alpenwald?” I asked.

She primmed her mouth. “It is not, you will forgive me, the place of the English to teach the Alpenwalders anything. We were good to your princess.”