A Little Knowledge

by Emma Newman

  The man on the doorstep gave the slightest bow, one acknowledging an equal, and said, “Her Royal Highness, Maharaj Kumari Rani Nucifera-Nelumbo.”

  He stood aside as the Princess climbed the steps. Elizabeth could see a drop of sweat roll down the side of Morgan’s head. This was ridiculous. Trust Cathy to insult someone on an international scale without even realising it.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Morgan said, and then bowed, moving aside to admit her.

  Elizabeth saw the edge of the Princess’s silk slipper cross the threshold and then walked over, the brightest, sweetest smile on her face. “Your Royal Highness,” she said as the Princess entered, followed by the guards. “Welcome to Londinium and to Lancaster House. You honour us with your visit.”

  She could see Morgan’s eyes, wide and fearful, over the Princess’s shoulder.

  “I was told you are very plain,” the Princess said. “More lies.” She turned to the man who’d announced her. “Bring the box.”

  “Would you like to take tea with me in the drawing room?” Elizabeth said, doing her best to ignore the horrified expressions on the servants’ faces. They were so silly—she hadn’t lied about who she was, she was merely being polite.

  “No,” the Princess said sharply, breaking Elizabeth’s flow. “I will not be here very long.”

  “Oh. Do you have another engagement?”

  “I am returning home as soon as my business here is over.”

  Elizabeth smiled again, wondering why the Princess was being so cold. Had she already met Cathy? No, judging by what she had said about being plain, she couldn’t have. Was there some point of etiquette she was unaware of?

  “I see,” Elizabeth said, hoping that her smile didn’t seem too forced. “Has your tour of Albion been enjoyable?”

  “It has been most enlightening,” the Princess replied frostily.

  “I must say, your English is very good.”

  The Princess drew herself up as if Elizabeth had said something rude. “Did you expect me to sound like a savage? My tutors were educated at Mumbai, Oxford, and Yale. I have had elocution lessons since the age of three. I am fluent in ten languages and English is my least favourite.”

  Elizabeth blinked. She was so rude! But all she could wonder about was the places other than Oxford that she mentioned with such pride. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with Mum—Mumbabai, nor Yale. Are they in Mundanus?”

  She could see Morgan close his eyes again, as if prayer were something he had only just discovered and wanted to do again and again. Like lawn tennis, she supposed.

  The Princess fixed her with a glare. “I have come to expect ignorance here. You are no exception.”

  Elizabeth was so shocked the words flew from her mind. As she grasped for a pithy retort, the man came back in, carrying a large ebony box inlaid with exquisite marquetry of ivory and mother-of-pearl.

  “I bring a message from my father, formerly known as the Prince of Rajkot. My father, the Maharana of Gujarat, no longer recognises the authority of the Patroons of Albion. We are henceforth the independent Kingdom of Gujarat, and the Maharana and Maharani of Gujarat will serve our Fae patrons directly. The thirty-seven members of the Rajkot Court who were born in Albion or Great Britain have been expelled. Your people are no longer welcome in Gujarat. This box,” she waved a jewelled hand at it, “contains the trade contracts previously held by citizens of Albion, many of them residents of Londinium. They are declared void as the Princely State of Rajkot no longer exists. All rights to export our goods are denied. No tithes will be paid to you or any of the Patroons of Albion from this day. Our sovereign border is closed to you and should any of your agents be discovered doing business in mundane Gujarat, they will be expelled.”

  Elizabeth bit her lip. She had the impression that the speech had been rehearsed and was very important, but she didn’t understand all of it. She knew nothing about Rajkot or Gujarat or contracts, but it was clear something had gone very wrong. People expelled from their court? No tithes? This sounded very serious.

  “But…but why?” was all she could think of to say.

  The Princess took a step towards her, intimidating in her regalia. “Over fifty years have passed since those in Mundanus threw off the shackles of your disgusting empire. That knowledge was hidden from my family, our Court held under Albion’s thumb, our nobles Charmed and intimidated into following your Patroons and their pawns placed in our Royal Court. No more.”

  “Disgusting empire?” Elizabeth said, feeling her cheeks flush. “How dare you!”

  “No, little Duchess, how dare you! How dare you profit from the wealth of our kingdom whilst taxing our royal family and denying us the right to trade our own goods? I came to Albion to see it for myself and to do the bidding of my father, the Maharana.” The Princess took another step forwards, forcing Elizabeth to move back a step. It didn’t seem that she was delivering a message by rote anymore. “And what do I find, Duchess? I find people who think of the world as it was hundreds of years ago. I have been treated as nothing more than a thing to be paraded at parties to demonstrate the power and influence of the ones I granted permission to escort me there! I have been spoken to like a child, a savage, an object to be slavered over and bargained for like a goat in a mundane market. I have had people touch my skin as if expecting it to feel different, without asking permission to approach my royal person. But that is not the worst I have found here.”

  She moved forwards again, Elizabeth stepping back until she nudged against a vase on a pedestal. It teetered but didn’t fall.

  “My father said, ‘Go to this distant Albion and tell me how our people fare there. Tell me if I have been too harsh in my judgement.’ Our people. Our. People.”

  Elizabeth slipped away to the side, desperate to put some air between them, to give herself a moment to think. “I…I have no idea who you are talking about!”

  “Exactly!” the Princess said, so loud the crystals tinkled in the chandeliers. “I have visited every court in Albion, attended balls and dinner parties and recitals, and not one of our people was there. Where are the two emissaries from Marwar? Where are the three wives who returned with their white husbands after they fell in love in our Court? Where are the children we were told were born to them? Where are the twin princes of the Zambian court who came to make their home here, mentioned in letters home over a hundred years ago?”

  “I have no idea!”

  “Precisely! They’ve been hidden away, pushed out of your courts and denied permission to return home by their Patroons! My father will learn that this place is everything we feared and worse. He is a kinder, more merciful ruler than any of yours have ever been. I can only hope that those exiles who crawl back to Albion in disgrace are welcomed by their own here. But I doubt it.”

  Princess Rani swept towards the door, pausing to turn and face Elizabeth. “You know nothing, closeted away in your ivory towers, seeing nothing but white faces. There is a whole world of beauty that you are denied by your ignorant, immoral Patroons. Gujarat is the first of the former Princely States to break free, but it will not be the last. Our neighbours will follow our example. Our friends in America—the colonies, as you so offensively call them still—are in agreement with us. Your ancient, backwards men cannot keep the influence of Mundanus a secret forever.” She looked Elizabeth up and down and then her face softened. “I pity you. Duchess or not, you have as much power as that umbrella stand.”

  She flicked a finger towards the carriages and her man hurried out before her. Elizabeth just stood there, trembling, as the hem of the Princess’s sari disappeared.

  Morgan closed the door and Elizabeth’s face burned under the stare of all of the servants. “Don’t look at me like that!” she cried. “I didn’t do anything wrong! She obviously hated us!”

  “I shall put this somewhere safe until the Duke returns,” Morgan said, picking up the box. “Don’t just stand there!” he said to the staff, and they all hurried off, leaving Eliza
beth alone in the hallway.

  Elizabeth sniffled, feeling shamed and upset, even though she was sure she hadn’t done anything wrong. Was this what politics was like? It was awful. Being Duchess had suddenly lost its appeal.

  20

  “Chief constable now?” Amesbury said, staring at the screen of Kay’s computer. “Well, he’s done all right.”

  “The crooked ones usually do, right?” Kay said, and he nodded.

  “If you need to know anything about him, just ask Kay,” the gargoyle said from the other side of her desk. “She’s a genius on that computer.”

  She winked at the gargoyle. Max was sure that if it had been possible, the stone cheeks would have blushed.

  “All we need to know is how to get a message to him that he won’t be able to ignore,” Max said.

  “I can help you with that,” Amesbury said. “And I know how to get it to him.”

  “So is this a sting operation?” Kay asked, and both Max and the gargoyle nodded.

  “I’m going to set up a meeting with him, saying I have critical information on the disappearances featured in the newspaper, and that I can help him find the one behind it all.”

  “But that won’t make any sense to him,” Kay said. “The disappearances go back too far. The same person can’t be responsible for them. I mean, that’s what he’ll think, being a mundane.”

  “I prefer the term ‘innocent’,” Max said.

  “He’s far from that,” Amesbury muttered. “He’s as crooked as they come.”

  “But he’s also probably unaware of what exactly is going on,” Max said. “It’s a grey area. Either way, if I say as much in the letter, he’ll know it’s something his contact will want to know about. Once he tells the Fae-touched, they’ll know they have to be there to contain a potential breach.”

  “And that’s when you’ll bust them like a total badass.”

  The gargoyle grinned at Kay. “Yup.”

  “I don’t want to arrest the puppet in Mundanus,” Max said. “I’ll watch the meeting point at a distance—with your help, Robert—and then once the puppet is identified, I can make the arrest in the Nether.”

  Amesbury nodded. “And then what happens to my old boss?”

  “I’ll have to investigate the extent of the corruption and how much they’ve tampered with him,” Max replied.

  Even though Amesbury didn’t look satisfied, he accepted it. Max found him easy to work with. He was calm and methodical. He’d only needed two cups of tea and a bit of a sit-down after meeting the gargoyle for the first time. His own experience made it easier for him to accept the “weird shit,” as Kay called it, and the chance that he could stop it from happening to anyone else made him highly motivated. He still wasn’t an Arbiter, though, so he had to be kept away from the puppets as much as possible. In the long term, Rupert was going to have to make more. The gargoyle scowled at him when he thought that.

  They’d had two puppets under surveillance since the tip-off from the Peonia boy about the Second Sons, and he couldn’t have done it without Amesbury’s help. At least it had been a good reason to get the gargoyle to leave the office. Max had tried to convince it to stay in the Nether as he came back and coordinated the next move, but the gargoyle had insisted. With Rupert’s high-tech sensors planted all around the two family houses, there wasn’t any way they could leave the Nether without them knowing.

  “I’ll leave it to you to set up the sting,” he said to Amesbury, who nodded. “Tell him I’ll go to his office at eight o’clock this evening. At least most of the staff will have gone home. Let’s get back to the Nether,” he said to the gargoyle.

  “But the sensor thingies are—” the gargoyle began, but Max wasn’t having any of it.

  “Nothing beats eyes on the job,” he said. “Those sensors don’t cover everywhere. Come on.”

  • • •

  Cathy shut herself in her bedroom, needing some space away from all the fussing. At least Will hadn’t been home when they’d finally got back—if he’d seen the huge hole she’d blasted in the side of the carriage he never would have wanted her to leave the house again.

  Carter had a concussion. They’d ended up sitting on the Nether road for a while waiting for him to be well enough to travel again. Carter had mostly held his head, looking like he was going to be sick any moment, trying to give her his resignation. Cathy spent the entire journey back telling him she wouldn’t accept it. She could only hope that it had sunk in.

  Once she’d explained what happened, Morgan told her about the Princess’s visit and how disastrous it had been. She felt terrible. She should have checked the day’s itinerary with Morgan before she left. The panicked message from Charlotte and then the attack had pushed all other thoughts from her mind. Morgan was only too happy to deliver the box containing the voided contracts to her study, leaving it to her to break it to Will.

  She lay on the bed and shook for a while, knowing it was a delayed reaction to the stress of it all, then fell asleep. A hand on her shoulder woke her.

  “Cathy?”

  She looked up into Will’s eyes. In those moments of drowsiness all she could think of was how handsome he was. Those big brown eyes, so kind, focused on her. Those lips, so soft, ready to be kissed.

  “Morgan said you were attacked. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It’s all fine. They ran away. Carter was brilliant.”

  “Tom is looking into it,” Will said, smoothing her hair away from her face. “We’ll find out who it was. I’m putting extra footmen on your carriage from now on, with the same protections as Carter.”

  “But those Charms cost a fortune; how will you—”

  “Shh, don’t worry about that.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll do anything to keep you safe.”

  “You’re not going to say some bobbins about me not being able to go out again, are you?”

  Will frowned. “No, of course not. I pledged to make those roads safe. If you changed your behaviour and news of that attack got out, it would look very poor indeed.”

  Cathy nodded. At least Will’s political ambition and her desire to be as independent as possible aligned for once.

  “There’s someone who wants to speak to you downstairs. Are you up to it?”

  “Give me a few minutes to freshen up. I’ll be right down.” They kissed and she did her best to ignore the way her traitorous body wanted more. He slid his hand down behind her neck and lifted her to him for a deeper, more passionate kiss.

  “Tonight,” he whispered, kissing her neck. “There are a few things I need to attend to first, then we’ll have the rest of the evening together.”

  She kissed him back and it was only when he left that she remembered what she’d learned about the marriages he was arranging. “Shit.” She pressed her fists into her forehead. When he kissed her like that it was hard to remember anything.

  She got up, washed her face, and tried not to think about how those kisses had felt. She had more important things to do than become some simpering thing pining for her husband to return and ravish her. She had to check in on Wilhelmina, whom she’d neglected terribly over the day. She also needed to work out the best way to prevent pregnancy without Lord Iris—or Will, for that matter—finding out. She should have done that already but there were never enough hours in the day and sneaking to a mundane pharmacy was so hard.

  She went down the stairs and Morgan guided her towards the drawing room. “Who’s waiting to see me?” she asked.

  “Dame Iris, your Grace.”

  Cathy missed a step. “What?”

  “She doesn’t look like the one who…the one who used to visit,” Morgan said in a whisper. “I think she’s new.”

  Cathy readied herself as best as she could and went in. A lady stood waiting for her near the window, her presence somehow filling the entire room. Cathy found herself bobbing a curtsy when she turned from gazing over the gardens to look at her.

  “Cathy,” she smiled. “
A pleasure to see you again.”

  Cathy took in the glossy black hair, the porcelain skin, the large, dark blue eyes. Something about her face was familiar. “…Eleanor?”

  “The very same,” Eleanor said with a dazzling smile. “You’re the first person to recognise me other than my husband.”

  “Holy shit,” Cathy gasped.

  Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “I know it’s rather a shock, but really, must one resort to such language?”

  “I…” Cathy went over to her. “How?”

  “A combination of your husband’s swift thinking and the kindness of our patron.”

  Cathy snorted. “There’s no kindness in him.”

  “There is if one has earned it,” Eleanor replied sternly.

  A sinking dread settled in Cathy’s stomach. After everything she’d been through, Eleanor seemed incredibly pro-Iris. But then, what did she expect? Lord Iris wasn’t going to restore a woman’s youth unless she was of use to him.

  “I’m not very good at earning his kindness,” Cathy said. “And you know I’m not…you know I don’t fit in.”

  Eleanor nodded and smiled, coming over and taking her hands. “My dear girl, I know how this life chafes at you. I’m not going to try and force you into being the opposite of what you are. We’ve both seen how unsuccessful that is. Don’t look so fearful, my dear. You have a handsome, clever husband, a bright mind, and a passionate heart. I am certain that together we will find a way to align your happiness with the goals of our family.”

  Cathy managed a smile and pulled away as Morgan brought in the afternoon tea. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. As Dame but also, I hope, as my friend.”

  Dame Iris sat down and gestured for Cathy to do the same. “Tell me what concerns you so.”

  Cathy poured the tea, buying some time to think of a way to put it. By the time both cups were full, she was no closer. She sighed at the ceiling. “Look, there’s no way I can dress this up. Bertrand Viola is planning to marry his daughter off to Nathaniel Iris.”

  “I know,” Eleanor replied, stirring her tea.