by Sarah Zettel
“Also terribly fortuitous for us, you see. Francesca was— you were—raised in England. Prior to her arrival in ’14, Princess Caroline never actually met Fr—you. Her Royal Highness, therefore, will not be overly familiar with the tiny details of your past life.”
“But I was at court,” I argued. It had ceased to feel odd to talk of my alternate past this way, and I found that disquieting in and of itself. “I formed friendships, shared intimacies. They’ll notice when I contradict myself.”
“But you’ve been ill. Deeply ill. Severely ill,” Mr. Tinderflint reminded me, in French, which was the court language, so we used it frequently. “Such long and serious illness disorders one’s memories. Besides . . .” He paused here, and I thought I saw something underneath Mr. Tinderflint, a hint of something hard and unforgiving. “No one at court remembers anything for long. Unless it be to disgrace an enemy. Then they never forget.”
This tidbit dropped so cold and serious from him that I started and my napkin slid from my lap. I bent to retrieve it, but a waiting member of the Dutch infantry was there before my fingers touched the linen.
“Merci,” I murmured on reflex.
“De rie—” she began, but clamped her lips shut tight around the end of the word and backed swiftly away.
I dropped my gaze, to cover my fresh surprise. Mr. Tinderflint had already turned the conversation back to names, genealogies, and politics. He’d missed it, but I’d marked her. The middle-sized girl with the spotty chin and unruly reddish hair under her cap had understood my French, and she had returned to her place, pretending nothing had happened. There was a chink in the fence erected by the firm of Tinderflint, Peele, and Abbott.
After nuncheon, it was on to what was rapidly becoming my least favorite activity. I must sit down and play Mr. Peele at cards.
“Cards are the chief activity of the ladies of the royal household, including Her Royal Highness,” that gentleman explained to me. “They play deep, and they play constantly. If you cannot match them there, all the rest of this practice is for naught.”
And so it was cards, for hours upon end: lottery, basset, piquet, cribbage, and particularly and dreadfully, ombre. This last, my tutor assured me, was the game most favored by the denizens of the court. I must learn all its variations: two-handed, three-handed, four, and five. For these last, Mrs. Abbott was drafted to join the game. I may say without fear of contradiction that the only thing worse than being quizzed by Mrs. Abbott was sitting across the card table from her. She was a grim and terrible player, and she hated to lose. My stays, earrings, and ribbons all got tighter if I had the nerve to take even a single trick.
On Sundays, I was allowed some measure of rest. There were no card games, at least. I could sit in my room and read. Mr. Tinderflint provided a selection of newspapers and gossip sheets, and even some new plays and poems. Without these, I would have perished from a dread surfeit of boredom and loneliness, because one thing I was not permitted to do was leave the house. I could not even walk in the kitchen garden. Lady Francesca was supposed to be in the country recuperating from her fever. She could not be so much as glimpsed at the window, so the curtains were always kept drawn in my rooms. I had begged Mr. Tinderflint to let me send a note to my cousin to let her know I was safe and well, but he only shook his head and repeated how much he understood, but their plan required strict secrecy, yes, strict.
I missed Olivia cruelly. I wanted to tell her what was happening to me. I wanted to hear what she made of it all, especially Mrs. Abbott, who dressed and acted like an upper servant, but who addressed the men who should have been her employers as equals, if not inferiors. Or her opinion on the fact that my room, which I was told belonged to the original Lady Francesca, bore no trace of her personal existence, excepting a workbasket so tidy I could not believe it was much used.
Now my chance to communicate with Olivia had appeared in the form of the redheaded maid, and it was on a Sunday that I was able to seize that chance.
I’d finished my breakfast and conversation with Mr. Tinderflint, and the gentleman had excused himself to go about his business. Outside, the church bells rang across the city, each calling to the other, reminding the faithful it was time to pray. I seldom enjoyed church. It was too stuffy in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, and endlessly dull, no matter what the season. Now I missed it, because it would have meant a change of scene and new faces about me. I sighed and tried to find something in my stack of papers and books that I had not read a dozen times.
Then there was a knock. The door opened, and there she was, my red-haired, linguistically talented maid. She bobbed a curtsy and scuttled over to the hearth, wielding a dust rag to polish the mantel and its ornaments.
I watched her. It was a good thing her back was turned at that moment, or she might have gotten the impression I wished to devour her whole, possibly with mustard.
I gathered my French together and whispered, “What is your name?”
The maid hesitated the tiniest amount and then began rubbing the mantel with renewed energy.
“Keep about your work,” I went on, softly, so softly. I focused my eyes on the door the whole time. I strained my ears for the scrape of a bolt or the tread of a foot. “I will make no disturbance. I ask only a favor. I leave a letter on the table. I beg that it be taken to the direction written there. That is all. To any person who does this thing, I will be most grateful.” I had been permitted to retain the earrings I’d worn the day I came, and I’d kept them ready against this moment. I drew them out now and laid them on the table with the letter I’d composed to Olivia. Then I sat down in my chair by the hearth and held up the Female Tattler gossip sheet in front of my face. I heard the girl rustling and shuffling about the room. I did not lower the paper. I heard her breath wheezing in her nose and the sound of ornaments being slid back and forth on the mantel. I crumpled the pages as I tried to keep my hands from lowering so much as one corner of my paper. I heard the door open and shut. The gossip sheet fell from my bloodless fingers.
The letter was gone. So were the earrings. I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks. It was a slender thread, and I knew it. It was very possible that my nameless maid might pocket the jewelry and throw the letter away. But there was a chance now. That letter might just reach Olivia. If anyone could work out how to get word back to me with news of friends who could take me in, it was my cousin.
CHAPTER TEN
THE GREAT DAY ARRIVES, AND BRINGS A REPRIEVE.
After this, my confinement rested easier on me. I had something of my own to look forward to now, something that belonged to Peggy Fitzroy, not Lady Francesca. More important, however, I had found a way around the firm of Tinderflint, Peele, and Abbott. I was not locked absolutely into this very strange prison.
There remained, of course, the possibility I might be found out, and I did not forget this. I watched the Messrs. and the Abbott so closely for signs and portents that I fumbled my forks and forgot the alliances of the Walpoles and the Cowpers, and who still reported to the venomous Duchess of Marlborough, making Mr. Tinderflint cough and repeat himself more than usual.
All that watchfulness produced an unexpected revelation. I was sitting at the card table with Mr. Peele that Wednesday, suffering through yet another round of ombre, when I saw something new. Something in the way his dexterous fingers held the pack and dealt the cards.
“You cheated!”
To those of you who live in more virtuous climes where the tyranny of the card pack is unknown, let me explain that a charge of cheating is most serious. Between gentlemen, it is in fact casus belli, and might result in having to face swords or pistols at an inconveniently early hour. I was expecting at least a shout of denial.
But this was Mr. Peele I addressed, and he simply pursed his pale lips. “I? Cheat?”
“Yes! You pulled this”—I brandished the offending five of clubs at him—“from the bottom of the pack!”
“Well, well, my lady.” Mr. P
eele plucked the card from my fingers and slipped it back among the others as he began to shuffle the cards again. “You finally saw it.”
I goggled. I gaped like a fish. Mr. Peele gathered up the cards I’d let fall and shuffled them into the pack as well.
“You . . . you’ve been cheating me all this while?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not.” He cut the cards and cut them again. “I told you, these games are deadly earnest. People do cheat. They cheat to gain money and advantage, and they will not be deterred because you are a female or bear a title. You need to know who cheats, and when it is happening, and how to adjust your own play to your advantage. That, my lady, is the real game.”
He spoke of more than the truth of cards, and I knew it. There was a whole world beneath those words waiting for me to look more closely. “It is in fact so important that I will be expecting regular reports from you while you are in the princess’s train.” He paused here, laying the pack in front of him and signing that I should cut the cards. “You will write to me about your games and the company you keep at the tables, most particularly about who is playing with whom, and for how much, and how honestly.”
I meant to ask him why. Of all the strange commands I had received so far, a requirement that I deliver a recitation of card games seemed very strange indeed.
But any potential remark on my part was interrupted by the door opening, and the Abbott sailing into the room.
“If you please, sir,” said Mrs. Abbott, who did not curtsy to anyone, ever. “I would like a word. Now.”
“You’ve had many words in the past weeks, Mrs. Abbott.” Mr. Peele collected the cards and began shuffling them yet again. “What might this one be?”
Mrs. Abbott reached into her apron pocket. She laid my letter on the table. Mr. Peele’s hands stilled.
“Against express orders,” Mrs. Abbott said. “Against all reason, she wrote this letter and bribed a maid to have it delivered.”
Carefully, Mr. Peele set the pack down so its edges aligned exactly square with the table. With equal care, he picked up my letter and read the direction. “How did you find this out, Mrs. Abbott?”
“Anneke was arguing with a porter over the cost of delivery. It seems she understands rather more French than she admitted to.”
I fell as far back in my chair as my corset would allow. I must be cursed. It was the only explanation. Only a lady cursed could find the one maid in the whole of London town who did not know how to effectively sneak around her employer.
“I have dismissed her,” Mrs. Abbott was saying.
“I wish you had not.” Mr. Peele turned my letter over in his long fingers.
Mrs. Abbott was not to be distracted, however. “Do you still believe this plan can move forward? That this girl can be in the least trusted?”
“Well, mademoiselle?” Mr. Peele lifted his gaze to me. “Mrs. Abbott says you cannot be trusted. What is your answer?”
I was ready to strangle on my own breath. I’d been afraid of getting caught, but I hadn’t concocted any lie to cover my actions. That was not just a mistake, it was an error of gargantuan proportions. My mother surely never was so careless in her intrigues. Here I was the spy’s daughter, and I could not smuggle out a simple letter. What would she say when I joined her in Heaven? I might not have to wonder long, because judging from the way Mr. Peele leveled his slitted gaze at me, he meant to accomplish that reunion sooner rather than later.
“It is a letter to my cousin.” Speaking the truth had to be better than being caught in hasty lie. “I wished to let her know I am safe. As I could not send it openly, I tried other means.”
“Very reasonable, of course. The sort of action I feel I should expect from you.” Mr. Peele broke open the letter and scanned it. “And just as you say. To your cousin, and you are safe and well, and will write when you can. By the same messenger, I presume?” He lifted one brow.
“Evidently not.” I kept my voice even and my eyes on Mrs. Abbott. Her lip quivered in its most dangerous fashion, holding some tirade in check. Mr. Peele, on the other hand, refolded my letter and sat back, tapping the edge of the paper against his hand.
“We had an agreement, my lady. You have violated it.”
“As I told you she would,” announced the Abbott.
“As Mrs. Abbott did indeed prophesy you would.” Mr. Peele inclined his head.
“It was a letter to my cousin,” I told them both once more. “You see for yourself it had no return direction or other information in it.”
“That is not the point, my lady. The point is whether you can be trusted. Whether you will obey.” Mr. Peele kept his dark gaze on me and slowly tore my letter in half. “Because if you will not obey, you are of no use to me. You become, in fact, a risk.” His subtle, beautiful fingers tore the letter again and again. “And I will not tolerate a risk.”
The door opened then. “Peele . . .” Mr. Tinderflint bustled in. When he saw our tableau, he drew his protruding stomach in tight, as if a blow had been aimed at it. “Peele, there’s been a message. From the palace. It’s time, Peele.” He was looking at the paper scraps on the table as he spoke, waiting to be told what had happened here.
I waited for Mr. Peele to say there’d been a letter from this house too, or an attempt at one. I waited for him to order me packed out into the street once more. I had thrown away my only chance—however strange and strained—at life and livelihood, and with it, the chance of learning some truth of my parents, especially my slandered mother.
But Mr. Peele simply reached out to take the new missive from Mr. Tinderflint. He read it carefully and slowly, which did nothing for my composure.
“It would seem that His Majesty King George will be leaving to visit Hanover in less than a month.” Mr. Peele looked over the edge of the paper at me. “It is Her Royal Highness’s express wish that Lady Francesca join the court in its summer residence at Hampton Court Palace in time to see His Majesty safely on his journey.” Mr. Peele paused. “That does not leave us enough time to locate or tutor an acceptable substitute. It seems we need you, my lady.”
Hope swelled in me. If I was needed, I had some power. I might be able to make some negotiation.
Mr. Peele’s lips twitched. “You are painfully obvious, my girl. Do not be tiresome and attempt to make use of our necessity. You have already disappeared without anyone bothering to search for you.” He paused to be certain I compassed the full import of these words. “Perhaps you think that kind Mr. Tinderflint will save you before we reach any extreme?” Mr. Peele said. “Tell her, Tinderflint.”
Mr. Tinderflint fluttered and fidgeted, obviously trying to divine what had occurred before he entered the room. “I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “Truly. Necessity, circumstance . . . could impel, yes, impel us all to regrettable measures . . .” The words trailed off miserably.
“Take her to her room, Mrs. Abbott,” said Mr. Peele. That good lady drew herself up to her full height, but Mr. Peele raised his hand. “I must confer with Mr. Tinderflint. I will speak with you afterward.”
And that, it seemed, was that. Mrs. Abbott followed me up to my pleasant, airy chamber and waited while I walked inside. With the feeling of having nothing left to lose, I turned to face her.
“Why do you detest me, Mrs. Abbott? What have I done to you?”
For a moment, Mrs. Abbott stood stone still. I was sure she was going to berate me in her colorful French, as she had so many times before. Instead, she reached beneath the collar of her black dress and brought out a miniature on a gold chain. She held it out, and hesitantly, I stepped forward to look. The miniature was an oval of ivory bearing the delicately rendered portrait of a dark-haired girl. She was a beauty, with round cheeks and an artful smile, posed so she seemed to be just turning to greet the viewer. There was only one person this could be. And it was true—she and I could have been related. Our dark eyes and the color of our skin were quite close. Her hair had been arranged in long curls to lie across one shou
lder, and it was at least as black as mine. Her brows were arched, as if she were questioning . . . something. It was a lively expression, maybe even a little mischievous. Lady Francesca knew something, and she might just tell.
But I was not the only person she resembled. I stared at Mrs. Abbott, taking in afresh that woman’s large, dark eyes and the shape of her face, which still showed the beauty she had once been. Mrs. Abbott said not one word but slipped the miniature back in its hiding place, and closed the door between us.
Why hadn’t I guessed it? Mrs. Abbott’s devotion to her former mistress had shown itself to me in a thousand ways as she constantly compared me to her, and always unfavorably. Why hadn’t I seen that she was Lady Francesca’s mother? Aside from the fact that Mr. Tinderflint had told me Lady Francesca’s entire family was dead of the smallpox, of course.
My breath came short enough to set my head spinning. I’d thought Mr. Tinderflint at least was my friend, but he’d just refused to defend me to Mr. Peele. Now I found he had lied to me about Francesca’s mother. So how could I believe what he said about mine? What other lies had he told?
I still couldn’t breathe. I needed air. I must open the window, whether my jailers permitted it or not. I crossed to the window and grasped the edges of the curtains. I glanced over my shoulder. The door remained shut. I clutched the velvet tighter, ready to draw it aside.
The velvet crinkled sharply.
I stopped. I fingered the fabric once more. Once more, it crinkled, with a sound like dry leaves. Or paper.
I looked to the door. It was still closed. I brought the curtain up close to my face and ran my fingers across it until I discerned the faint edges of a rectangle. Something had been sewn inside. Something the size and shape of a letter.
The door was going to open at any minute. I was sure of it. The Abbott and Peele were going to mince me up for pies. I ran to Francesca’s workbasket and fished out her delicate scissors. The door was going to open right now. It would open this second, while I was very, very carefully snipping the stitches between the curtain lining and the velvet. The only thing in the room louder than the ticking of the clock was the banging of my heart. I eased two fingers into the hole I’d made until their tips touched the rough edge of a piece of paper.