An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(48)

I widened my eyes and he smiled. “I was a very mature boy. But I cared much for her, and I still do. She was so serious, so lovely and always restricted!”

His gaze fell to the tight lacing of my waist and rose slowly to the heavy jewels at my wrists and head. “You feel a little of that, do you not? How one must suffocate? I always tried to relieve her of that.”

“You encouraged her to misbehave,” I guessed.

“She needed little enough encouragement,” he told me. “There was always a rebel beneath the royal. But whenever we got ourselves into trouble, I took the blame. It was easy enough. Everyone knew who we were—Gisela the good girl and Maximilian the scoundrel.” His tone was mocking, but his lips took a wistful turn. “More than once I was whipped for some plot of her making. Still, I do not regret it.”

“I imagine there is little you do regret,” I said.

“Why don’t we do something scandalous and find out?” With that, he settled back into his chair and sipped his champagne, never breaking eye contact with me.

“Enjoying yourself?” came a voice at my ear. I turned to see Stoker kneeling just behind me in a posture of supplication.

“What are you doing on the floor?” I demanded. “Get up at once.”

“I cannot sit in your presence,” he told me in mock seriousness. “It is a violation of royal etiquette. But I can kneel in devotion to my princess.”

“You are an ass,” I hissed.

“I am also about to save you a good deal of trouble,” he told me. He turned his head away from the theatre. “Do not look now. In the stalls. Second row on the end.”

“Who is it?”

“Who is the very last person you would want to see in your current guise?” he asked.

“Mornaday.” It was a name, but I said it like an expletive.

Stoker nodded. “Mercifully, his duties demand he pay closer attention to the audience than the royal box and he has not looked often this way. If he suspects for a moment—” He broke off. There was no need for him to finish the sentence. Mornaday had occasionally played the ally; one might even consider him a friend. But an ambitious second-in-command at Scotland Yard was not the person to conspire with to impersonate a foreign royal. If he got as much as a sniff of something amiss with the Alpenwalder delegation, he would be after it like a hungry dog with a juicy bone.

Stoker spoke again. “Try drawing a little less attention to yourself,” he suggested.

I edged my chair back a little, casting my face deeper into the shadows. “That is the best I can do. I am supposed to be the guest of honor at this event,” I reminded him.

“Imperious as a princess already,” he returned lightly. “I think I shall make you clean my walrus when we go home just to put you in your proper place.” He dared a quick wink before resuming his post in the rear of the box. I drank deeply of my champagne.

Home. The word was jarring in this context. I had never had a home, not a real one. My aunts and I had moved frequently for reasons I had come to understand only too late. My travels had taken me around the world, drawing me across the globe and back again in pursuit of my beloved butterflies. I never tarried long in any spot for the fear that I would become too rooted, too settled. But with our employment at the Belvedere and the eccentric lodgings of which we had both become fond—to say nothing of our personal attachment—I found myself for the first time perched on the edge of domesticity.

It was a terrifying thought. Hearthsides and cradles held no charms for me. I was unfettered as the east wind, I reminded myself. And the sooner Stoker realized I had no interest in darning shirts and stirring cook pots, the better off we would both be.

I turned in my chair to meet Duke Maximilian’s delighted gaze as I held out my glass again. “I would like more champagne,” I announced.

“With pleasure, Princess,” he said, obliging me.

I caught the baroness’s glance of reproof as I started on my third glass. The coupes were small, scarcely bigger than thimbles, and I was well capable of handling my intoxicants, I thought in some irritation. Besides, the combination of the handsome duke, the jewels, and the danger of what I was doing was heady enough. I had spent too long cocooned in the security of the Belvedere, pinning mounts and answering correspondence. For just these few hours, I was on the tightrope again, balanced precariously between glory and disaster, and the thrill of it coursed through me with far more effect than the glittering wine.

I raised my glass to Duke Maximilian. “To your very good health, Your Grace.”

He grinned and touched his glass to mine.





CHAPTER





13


The rest of the performance passed in a golden haze from the faery-tale circumstances—heightened no doubt by the excellence of the champagne as well as the liminal magic of the opera itself. The librettist had clearly been inspired by Handel’s work of the same name, but his handling of the myth of Atalanta was altogether darker. The first act saw the princess thwart her father’s attempts to see her matched with a man who could best the fleet-footed heroine in a race. In this version, a suitor dropped enchanted golden apples to distract her, but Atalanta was guarded by Artemis, protectress of chaste maidens, and the goddess gave her heightened speed so she might win in spite of the conspiracy of men to cheat her into marriage. The act had finished with the princess singing of her triumph but also of her loneliness, her longing for someone of her own choosing to share her victories as well as her woes.