A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  Perhaps, while the lady was at dinner with her brother and their host, Kira could slip out for a walk. It was still raining, but she hardly cared. She had to move the thing. It would never strengthen again if she spent her days on her backside instead of her feet. Of course, she should also use the time to poke about Lady Pratt’s things. She’d spotted a box of correspondence. Magazines that might have pages tucked within them. And the lady was out of her rooms so rarely. . . .

  Pulling her dress up above the knee, she indulged in a moment of self-pity as she verified with her eyes what her fingers had told her. Swollen. Ugly. And, oh, how it hurt. But pity wouldn’t get her back on the stage. She tossed her skirt down again and stood. Lady Pratt probably wouldn’t stay with the others as long as Rushworth would hope. If Kira was going to get in both a walk and time to read her employer’s letters, she couldn’t dawdle.

  The door opened even as she reached for it, and though Kira jumped, the girl on the other side smiled. She looked to be near Kira in age, with a face that looked as swollen as Kira’s knee—no doubt related to the belly protruding with a babe. She was probably about seven months along, perhaps even eight, and she extended a hand in welcome.

  “My aunt said I would find you in here. I’m Felicity. You’ll be sharing my room while you’re here.” She motioned at the tight space.

  Kira smiled and took the also-swollen fingers in hers. “Good to meet you. K . . . Sophie. Sophie Lareau. Thank you for sharing your space with me.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing.” Felicity stepped back into the hallway, a hand upon her belly. “Are you going out?”

  “I thought to walk a bit.”

  The girl didn’t question her intentions to go out in the rain. Rather, she nodded, her eyes gleaming. “The Duke of Stafford’s carriage is coming up the drive. I was going to watch them come in—we can peek out from behind the stairs and not be seen. Would you like to join me? Her Grace always has the most beautiful gowns.”

  Beautiful gowns . . . How Kira longed for her own. To feel silk against her skin. She probably shouldn’t go stare at another woman’s, not if she wanted to keep her focus. But she hated to be rude—and it might come in handy at some point to have a friend. She had never spied before to know for sure, but it seemed wise. “Thank you. I would love to.”

  Felicity smiled, proving herself pretty under the obvious strain of impending motherhood. “Follow me.”

  Kira did, unable to help but note the way the girl moved—with that unmistakable wincing step that bespoke pain. She frowned, trying to tamp down long years of training, but it was no use. Though she had left the life her mother had wanted for her, she couldn’t forget what she’d been taught for so many years under Mamochka’s tutelage. “It is your back paining you?”

  Felicity glanced back at her over her shoulder, question in her brows. “Aye, and down into my legs.”

  Nothing terribly unusual there, though it could certainly make for an uncomfortable pregnancy. Kira smiled. “My mother was a midwife. I learned much from her.” It had been a cruel irony that Mamochka had herself died giving birth, after saving so many other women. That all the tricks she had taught Kira had accomplished nothing.

  And her family had wondered at her determination to follow her heart onto the stage. How could they have failed to understand? Da, death was part of life. But that hardly meant she had to live a life that tried and failed to fend it off every day.

  Felicity’s eyes lit. “Really? Perhaps you’ll still be here when my time arrives. We’ve a midwife in the village, of course, but . . .” She leaned close, a smile playing at her mouth. “I never much liked her. Especially . . .”

  They turned a corner and headed for the unadorned service stairs. “Especially?”

  Sighing, Felicity turned half around as she continued moving. “My husband left—right after I found I was with child. Everyone’s saying the babe scared him off, the thought of being a father—and the midwife, she’s his mum’s cousin.” The girl’s brows drew down. “The one thing we agree on is that the thought of a babe wouldn’t have sent him running. So she thinks it was something I did.”

  Men could be such idiots. Thinking it their right to come and go, to pick and choose when to be responsible. Kira made sure her smile was warm. “I daresay it was not that. Men can just be as skittish as a bird, nyet?”

  “Not Stew.” Felicity’s face went hard before she turned it back to the stairs. “I don’t know where he is, but I know he’s there for a good reason, and that he’s coming back. He wouldn’t have just left.”

  Kira pressed her lips against a response. Men were always doing things their women thought they wouldn’t. But there was no point in saying so to those determined to believe the best. Or to those already nursing heartache at the worst. “I am sure you are right.”

  They went up the stairs, and at the top Felicity pressed a finger to her lips. The girl paused a moment, looking both ways, then motioned Kira to follow as she darted out into the hallway. A few moments later they were both scrunched into the little closet below the stairs, peering through a crack in the door.

  Kira hadn’t felt so like giggling in months.

  The butler shot them a look that mixed warning with amusement and seconds later reached for the front door. A footman hurried out with umbrellas.

  The first to enter was a redhead, who stepped inside with a smile bright as the sunshine. Felicity leaned close. “That must be Lady Ella—Tabby’s been going ever on about her, and Evans is teasing his lordship mercilessly.”

  Kira didn’t know who Tabby and Evans were, but she smiled. “She is lovely.” And had excellent taste. The pale yellow of her dress perfectly complemented her hair and the ivory of her complexion, and was in a style similar to Kira’s favorite gown. She wore pearls around her throat and rubies in her ears.

  Lifting a hand to her own ears, Kira couldn’t help but wish for the gold and diamonds that had hung there so recently. She had them with her—she hadn’t trusted her staff enough to leave them unattended in her flat for months—but knew well she couldn’t ever put them on.

  “Can you imagine wearing a gown like that?” Felicity breathed a wistful sigh, then chuckled softly. “Not that such a one would fit me now, of course.”

  A couple came through the door next, saving Kira the need to respond. Felicity softly breathed, “The duke.”

  For a moment Kira saw only the nearly-matching golden heads, the exquisite gown, the perfectly tailored suit. Then the duke looked up, and a vague memory stirred. She’d seen him before—she was sure of it. Not such an odd thing, really. She had met several English dukes on Andrei’s arm and had no doubt glimpsed many more in the theater crowds.

  But it was when the duchess looked up that Kira pulled in a gasp before she could stop herself.

  “I know,” Felicity whispered. “Simply gorgeous. What would you call that shade of green?”

  Unlucky, that’s what. Kira squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again, but that only made her more sure. The Duchess of Stafford was Brook Sabatini. Once welcomed into the palace of Prince Albert of Monaco as his granddaughter. Once thought to be the daughter of famed opera star Collette Sabatini and Prince Louis.

  Once a ballet student that Sergei had let practice with the corps—at first solely because he wanted to indulge the royal household, but she had held her own. She had never performed with them, of course, but she had been there for practices. Been with them in the dressing room, laughing along with the other girls at the men paying them court.

  Kira remembered when she had left, soon after Lord William’s tragic death on the mountain roads—which was why Brook’s husband looked familiar. Lord William’s son. Not the duke at the time, of course, just Lord Harlow. The prude of the family, the girls had always joked. As handsome as his father, though he never made any attempt to get to know the dancers as Lord William had done. They had all tried to tease Brook about him, but she’d insisted they were only friends.

  How s
he would have liked to approach her now. To kiss her on the cheeks and laugh with her that “only friends” was clearly much more now.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t let the duchess see her, much less speak to her.

  And why did the circle of European nobility have to be so cursedly small?

  An older gentleman entered last, doffing his hat and then stepping near to Brook. The hand he touched to the small of her back was protective, familiar.

  “Lord Whitby,” came Felicity’s helpful murmur. “The duchess’s father.”

  So she had found him. That was why she’d left Monaco, just a few weeks before the Ballet Russe headed back to Paris. To be reunited with her true father. Kira had spared her a prayer or two at the time, before their return to France.

  Then she had met Andrei.

  Her eyes slid shut. She had been a different girl when Brook knew her. Still untarnished by the world, still claiming that she’d remain so. They had blushed together at the jesting of the other dancers about their men.

  Now look at them. The former princess was now a duchess, surrounded by a husband, by a beautiful friend, by a father.

  And Kira was hiding under the stairs, pretending to be a maid so she could please her patron. Her fingers dug into the doorframe. “Do they come here often?”

  “When they are all in the area, aye. Every week or so. His lordship and the duke are cousins, you see. And the duchess is cousins with your mistress and her brother.”

  Lord Rushworth’s words came back to her. “Our cousin used to prattle about her love of the ballet from her days in Monaco. . . .”

  Cursedly small world indeed.

  Ella followed the Staffords into the drawing room, looking about her with interest even as she reckoned that, had she a knife, she could have sliced through the tension in the air. Stafford and Whitby were both still a bit miffed that she and Brook had insisted on coming—even before the note had arrived from Cayton.

  There had certainly been no dissuading the duchess then.

  But just as obviously, Brook had no desire to be now in the same room as her duplicitous cousin. She walked stiffly, spine straight and shoulders back, her hand resting on Stafford’s arm. Whitby was at her other side, his face in hard lines.

  None of them noticed when Ella slipped off to the side. There were plenty of times in life when she enjoyed being the center of attention, but not tonight. Tonight she would rather observe and let the others forget she was there.

  Her first observation was somewhat startling, given the changes in Catherine Pratt’s appearance. Pity stirred in Ella’s chest. As she sat on a sofa, the woman looked gaunt enough that she might indeed fail to leave footprints in the mud if ever she wandered off. When she turned a hollow-eyed gaze on her long-sworn enemy and blinked as though she didn’t even see her, the pity turned to something deeper. Stronger.

  Ella had never claimed her brother’s ability to know just what to pray . . . and it was true she had missed something vital buried deep in her oldest friend’s heart . . . but she wasn’t oblivious. Sometimes the Lord sounded an alarm within her to tell her to pray—and one was clanging like a fire bell now.

  “You could have taken pity on us, Lady Ella. Stayed at the castle. Declined getting involved in this.”

  Cayton’s voice sent a little trill dancing up her spine, whether either of them wanted it to or not. She turned, half a smile in place, to see he’d slipped into the room behind them and was scowling at the backs of his newly arrived guests. Or perhaps at his not-quite-as-newly arrived ones. Hard to say. “And miss the chance to make you think I came only to torture you with flirtation? Never.”

  “Ella. It’s not a jesting matter.” He sent her a second-long glance, full of serious things, before looking away again. “This isn’t your business, and you oughtn’t to make it so.”

  “It’s as much mine as yours or Stafford’s.”

  “In what world is that true?”

  “In this one. My brother is involved—as is one of my dearest friends. That is as much a claim as Stafford has, isn’t it?”

  His only answer was a throaty growl, and then he strode away. Or stomped away, more like.

  She could understand, even appreciate his worry. Really she could. But if he thought for a moment it was going to budge her . . .

  Pressing her lips against a smile, she meandered over to the wall with the mantel, her eye drawn by the paintings hanging there. There was one of who must be the late Lady Cayton, though Ella didn’t remember ever meeting her. And a smaller one nearby of Addie, done just a few months before.

  Her ears strained toward the far side of the room, where Brook was greeting her cousins. Vague words, uttered in a polite tone.

  Ella peeked over at them. Catherine’s eyes still looked unfocused as she sat staring at the floor, and Lord Rushworth was frowning at her. At length, the lady’s lips parted, and she at least looked up at her cousin. “How is your son?”

  The ache was so encompassing that Ella had to splay a hand over her chest to try to push it down. Over the years, she’d heard Catherine Pratt speak in quite a few different ways. Overly sweet, catty, flirtatious, goading, angry, serious. But this tone had no name that Ella knew to apply to it. Raw, perhaps. It was the closest she could come.

  Brook sighed. “He is well. Growing.”

  “Walking?”

  Tears stung Ella’s eyes, and she had to look back to the painting of Addie to blink them away.

  Brook’s hesitation lasted a heartbeat longer. “Yes. And chattering, though few words are understandable.”

  “Cris said you tried to come to the funeral, but he let no one in.” How could a voice be stripped so very bare? It sounded like little more than an echo. “I was not sorry at the time, but . . . but it was good of you to try to come. Thank you.”

  Ella didn’t dare to see how Brook handled such words. Not with her own tears refusing to be tamped down.

  “We are family, Kitty. Whatever else is between us, I grieved with you over the loss of your son.”

  “I know. You are too good not to do.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  Ella drew in a long breath and blinked until her eyes cleared. Rowena had tried to befriend Catherine last autumn, and it had proven a disastrous mistake. The lady was capable of cruelty and not to be trusted—facts that could not be changed.

  But something had shifted. That wasn’t optimism speaking, not hope. Not something she could misinterpret. Even Catherine Pratt wouldn’t have starved herself for six months simply to play on their sympathies. Even Catherine Pratt wasn’t so skilled at deceit that she could feign this level of hopelessness.

  Something had changed within their rival. They simply had to determine how to react to it, how to use it. Not that Ella wanted to use a mother’s grief to her own ends—that wasn’t what she meant—but . . .

  “Catherine.” Whitby stepped toward the Rushworths, motioning toward the empty cushion beside the lady. Ella watched from the corner of her eye as he said, “May I?”

  Catherine didn’t so much as blink. “As you wish, my lord.”

  Whitby lowered himself to the seat. “Rarely over the years have I had cause to speak to you two as family, and we all know why. But I will now. Catherine, you must pull yourself out of the morass now, or it will never let you go.”

  Ella turned her head their way in time to see the anger cover Catherine’s face. “How dare you?”

  “I dare as one caught in the same morass for far too long.” Whitby’s face somehow remained impassable and yet not unkind. “I know what it is to lose a spouse and a child.”

  Catherine turned her face away from him, nostrils flaring. “You found your daughter.”

  Brook shifted closer to her husband. Ella raised her gaze again to the painting of Addie. Whitby had never seen Brook at that age, sitting up with such delight. So far as she had seen, he’d had no portrait nor photograph to remind him of her. Was that perhaps in part the reason Cayton had commiss
ioned one? Did the loss surrounding him, his own wife’s included, make him determined to capture that early phase too?

  He had found a top-notch artist. Most portrait painters captured only the detail—this one captured the heart of that sweet little girl. And she surely hadn’t sat for whoever had done it, not so still for so long. Yet still he had put to canvas the way that one lock curled just so around her ear. That precious dimple in her elbow.

  Whitby sighed. “Eighteen years later I found her, yes. But that is an eternity to be without one’s child, especially when the whole world insists she is dead.”

  Brook moved to the sofa and set a hand on her father’s shoulder.

  Catherine didn’t deign to look at him again. “You never believed them.”

  “And was labeled daft for it. I realize there are vast differences in our situations, Catherine. But the feelings . . . the feelings are the same, regardless of the eventual result of mine. I know that pain that surrounds you always. I know that darkness threatening to consume you whole. You mustn’t let it.”

  “What does it matter if it does?”

  Beside Catherine, her brother sighed and reached for her hand. “Please, Kitty. Please listen to him. How many times have I begged you?”

  A throat cleared in the doorway, and Ella spun with the others to see the butler there. He bowed. “Excuse me. Dinner is served.”

  Everyone shifted, stood, ready to follow the summons. Even Catherine took to her feet. In the shuffle Ella nearly missed her quiet “I am not hungry. I think I shall—”

  “No.” Lord Rushworth’s voice was muted, but his tone brooked no argument. “You will eat with us, Kitty. I insist.”

  A wise insistence, but Ella wasn’t surprised to look their way and see that the lady’s eyes had lost all feeling again, that her posture remained upright but somehow slack, as though a puppeteer’s string held her erect more than her own will.

  Lord Rushworth looked over his sister’s bent head and directly at Ella. His gaze went soft, his lips hinted at a smile. He nodded, though he made no greeting across such a distance.