Читать книгу Princess of Fortune - Miranda Jarrett - Страница 10

I sabella stood exactly in the center of Lady Willoughby’s front hall and tried hard—very hard—to keep from losing her temper. It was hot in the airless space, with the doors and windows closed tight and the afternoon sun streaming in through the fan light overdoor. Inside Isabella’s black lace gloves, her hands were sweating, and the long curving feather on her bonnet kept tickling the nape of her neck in a most annoying fashion. The tall case clock ticked away each second with a solemn finality, counting off the wasted minutes that Captain Lord Thomas Greaves was making her wait.

She did not like waiting. She never had, and she never should, considering her rank, but she was determined to give him the benefit of the doubt for this first time. It might not be his fault. Likely the admiral was keeping him with some sort of nonsense, the foolish old man. She would be gracious, and grant the captain the favor of her patience.

But if he ever dared keep her waiting like this again—ah, she would not forgive him, ever.

“I am sure the captain will here shortly, ma’am.” Lady Willoughby gave Isabella her usual watery smile. “He seems like a very nice gentleman.”

Isabella sniffed. “He has not been brought here to be nice. He is here to keep me safe.”

Once again she looked out the long window beside the door. Lady Willoughby’s glossy green carriage with the matched grays was sitting there waiting at the curb, taunting her with the freedom it represented. She didn’t care if the others believed she was exaggerating: she was a prisoner. This was the closest she’d been to leaving this house since she’d been brought to it in the middle of the night, three weeks before, and she could not wait to feel the warmth of the sunlight and the breeze across her skin, and to see more of the city beyond this single boring square.

“I am very sorry, princess,” Lady Willoughby said, as if she could read Isabella’s thoughts, “but I cannot let you go alone. For your own good, you see. You must wait for the captain to escort you to the carriage.”

Isabella frowned, glancing pointedly at the two large footmen standing ready to barricade the door if she tried to escape.

“Oh, yes, of course, you silly goose,” she muttered in Italian, as much to irritate the other woman as to keep her own comments safe. “We cannot tax the gaolers hired to keep me caged like an animal, can we?”

“Yes, just so.” With no notion of what the princess had said, Lady Willoughby smiled again, even as she wrung her hands with despair. “I’m sure when the captain comes, you shall have the nicest drive imaginable.”

Isabella smiled in return and kept speaking in Italian. “True, true, true, quite the nicest, once you give the captain my leash to hold for himself.”

She couldn’t play such tricks on Captain Lord Greaves. How could she have known that Cranford would have found even a single man in this country to speak Italian so well? Tears had started to her eyes when she’d heard the familiar, rolling words, she’d been that struck with sudden homesickness, and for one horrible moment she’d gasped aloud from the shock. But after that she’d managed to hide her feelings, the way a princess always must. She hadn’t let the captain know how surprised she’d been or how lonely she’d felt, and she certainly hadn’t revealed that she’d found him passing handsome, too.

He wasn’t like the other English sailors she’d met on the interminable voyage here, rough, ill-spoken men with dreadful battle scars and missing teeth, and he wasn’t like the sorry old warhorses the admiral had first introduced her to, either. This captain stood straight and proud, his dark blue uniform tailored to show off his broad shoulders and flat stomach. He had fire to him, too, a challenge in his blue eyes and a bite to his smile, and he hadn’t been afraid of her. That was rare, and she liked it.

To be sure, he hadn’t shown her one iota of the respect due her rank, but she could teach him that. He was English, and even an English lord like Captain Greaves could not be expected to understand the finely detailed etiquette of the Monteverdian court. But he seemed clever enough. After these last long, lonely weeks, she would welcome any such challenge, an amusing way to pass the days until Buonaparte was defeated and she could sail for home.

Behind her she could hear his measured footsteps at last coming down the hall to join her, just as she could hear Lady Willoughby’s little birdlike exclamations—such a meek and spineless creature!—as she rushed to greet him. But Isabella didn’t turn, not at first, keeping her face well hidden inside the curving silken arc of her bonnet’s brim.

His first lesson would be simple enough. She would not jump for the delight of his company. He must come to her, and be grateful for her notice.

“What detained you, Captain Greaves?” she asked at last, without turning. “You knew that I wished to leave directly.”

She knew he couldn’t ignore her, not only because of his orders, but because she’d taken care of exactly where she stood. She’d learned that from watching her mother, another of royalty’s little tricks. The sunbeams slicing through the fan light must be making the red velvet of her gown glow like a flame against the stark black and white of the marble floor. How could he possibly be looking anywhere else? It was difficult being a small woman, particularly here in England where the females seemed all to be great gangly storks, and she must rely upon such careful planning to keep attention focused on her.

And for extra emphasis, she let his silence stand for another half beat before, at last, she broke it.

“You have no answer for me, Captain?” She turned, just enough to look over her shoulder, and she did not smile. “No explanation for your delaying me?”

He bowed, his wavy hair falling forward over his brow. “Is there any explanation that would be acceptable to you, ma’am?”

“No. There is not.” She was surprised that he’d answered her question with a question, and surprised, too, that he wouldn’t tell her the obvious reason, that he’d been with the admiral. Unless he hadn’t—a possibility that annoyed her even as it piqued her curiosity. “But no explanation is no excuse, either.”

“I didn’t claim that it was, ma’am.” One of the footmen handed him his gold-trimmed hat, and he settled it squarely on his head, as if preparing for battle. “Is the carriage here, Lady Willoughby?”

“Yes, Captain my lord.” Nervously, Lady Willoughby peered out the window, just to be certain, as if the carriage might have somehow been whisked away by thieves when she wasn’t looking. “But at my brother’s request, I have kept the princess within the house until you joined her.”

“‘Within, within!’” Unable to contain her impatience, Isabella flung one end of the tasseled shawl over her shoulder. “You have done nothing but keep me within, Lady Willoughby, ever since I came here! You might as well have locked me in your darkest dungeon, behind bars of iron, for all that I have been your prisoner!”

“If that is the case, ma’am,” he said, taking her by the elbow without waiting for permission, “then we had better go without.”

She began to pull her elbow away, not liking such familiarity, but then the two footmen blocking the door parted for Isabella and the captain like Moses at the Red Sea. The door swung open, too, and they were outside, on the steps—free!—and Isabella forgot all about the hand at her elbow.

She looked up at the sky and blinked at the brightness. The London sky lacked the brilliance of the one that covered Monteverde, and unlike that perfect enameled blue, this sky was muffled by a haze of coal smoke. But it was still the sky, not the ceiling of a drawing room, and she couldn’t help smiling at the difference as the tassels on her shawl rippled in the breeze.

Yet the captain didn’t share her pleasure. “Come along, ma’am,” he said, steering her down the steps as if her elbow were the rudder on some small boat. “It’s not wise for you to stand out here in the open.”

With an unhappy little sigh, she let him hurry her into the carriage. Not that she had much choice: even with no more contact than his hand on her elbow, she was conscious of how much larger, how much stronger, he was than she. This is what he was supposed to do, watch out for her welfare, but she’d never before had to consider herself a target.

“You ordered this closed carriage, didn’t you, Captain?” she asked as she climbed inside, the leather squabs and polished brass trim warm from waiting in the sun. “After all I’ve been through, you knew I would wish for an open carriage, so I might feel the air, but you chose a closed one instead.”

“Then we’ll keep the windows open.” His glance swept over the quiet square, searching for any sign of something or someone that didn’t belong. “And I believe it was the admiral who suggested the closed carriage.”

“Open windows aren’t the same.”

“No, they’re not.” His expression was stern, all business, as he sat across from her. “I won’t pretend otherwise, ma’am. But I agree with the admiral’s choice. In an open carriage, you would be far too vulnerable to any sharpshooter with a good eye.”

She had not heard that word before—sharpshooter—but she’d no trouble deciphering its meaning. Instantly she pictured herself as she’d appear in that open carriage, a bright patch of red and black, visible from every window and every rooftop they would pass. She knew she should be grateful for the captain’s experience, but the reality behind it frightened her. Though her parents had tried to keep the worst news from her, she knew what had happened to the French royal family. A crown didn’t grant the same omnipotence it once did; Isabella had only to consider how she herself had been sent away to understand that.

Yet she didn’t want to be a villain to those who supported Buonaparte, or a symbol for the English who didn’t. All she wished was to be herself, and for the captain to be the way he’d been inside the house, bantering with her in Italian and not searching shop windows for lurking assassins with chilly English efficiency.

The footman latched the door shut, and at last the carriage rumbled to a start, the iron-bound wheels scraping over the paving stones as they left the square and headed along the city streets. She leaned forward, eager for even a glimpse of the city.

“So where are we bound, ma’am?” The buildings and streets they were passing would mean something to him, neighborhoods and districts he could recognize, while to her everything had a blurry sameness through the window. “Did you or Lady Willoughby tell the driver a destination?”

“I didn’t know one to tell him.” She felt foolish and lost, having earned the freedom she’d craved without any sense now of what to do with it. “I have been too much a prisoner to learn of anything beyond those four grim walls.”

“Ma’am, you were a guest in a Berkeley Square town house.” The captain’s smile was patient and obligatory, a smile guaranteed to make her feel even more foolish and lost. “No one would honestly consider Lady Willoughby’s house to be a prison.”

“It was the same as one.” Her chin trembled. “They allowed me no liberty, no privacy.”

“You allowed them no peace,” he countered. “Nothing Lady Willoughby might have done to you merited that tantrum over your hair. When I was a boy, my mother would have taken a hairbrush to me or my brothers or sisters for behavior like that, and she wouldn’t have used it on our heads, either.”

She’d thought he’d understand, but he didn’t, or at least he was pretending not to, with this nonsense about his mother’s hairbrush. “Your mother wasn’t a queen.”

“No,” he said, pushing his hat back from his forehead with his thumb, “but she was an English countess, which amounts to much the same thing.”

She frowned, wondering what exactly her mother would do or say in this circumstance. “But Lady Willoughby and her servants have been unkind to me, Captain. They did not treat me like a guest. They searched through my trunks and mussed my gowns.”

“How else could they be sure that no enemy could have hidden something harmful in your belongings?” he asked, the logic perfectly clear to him. “They meant only to protect you.”

She sniffed. “They have intercepted my invitations and letters of welcome from my cousins, your English King George and Queen Charlotte, and kept them from me.”

“Lady Willoughby wouldn’t do that, especially not with correspondence from His Majesty. More likely His Majesty has been occupied with affairs of state, and has not yet, ah, found the time to write to you.”

“No, Captain, that was not it at all.” She lowered her voice in confidence, even though they were alone. “Because I am a foreigner, and not English like them, the persons in this house will not trust me. They will not even try.”

He raised one skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t believe that. It’s rubbish.”

“You should believe it, rubbish or not, because it is so,” she said, switching back to speaking Italian. She leaned closer to him, close enough that she could see the darker flecks of blue that sparked his eyes. She clasped her hands before her, beseeching as the shawl slithered off her arm. “Can you trust me, Captain?”

But though she waited, he didn’t answer. Instead of listening, he’d let his eyes follow the shawl as it slipped from her shoulders and came to an abrupt stop there on the neckline of her gown. Monteverdian ladies were not ashamed to display their figures to the best advantage possible, and Isabella had soon realized she wore her gowns cut much lower over her breasts than Lady Willoughby and her dour friends did. Now the captain must have realized the difference, too, his English efficiency scattered to oblivion.

So this, then, was how her mother would have ruled the captain, but the thought gave her no satisfaction. She didn’t want him to be like every other man, whether English or Monteverdian. She wanted him to be better.

“I have trusted no one since I left Monteverde, Captain.” She pulled the shawl back over her shoulder, willing to put aside her disappointment and give him another chance. “No one at all, and certainly none of your English. But you, Captain—truly, I might be able to trust you, if you can but trust me.”

He cleared his throat, and at last looked back at her face. And he knew he’d erred. She could see the chagrin in his expression, which was, she supposed, something.

“I’m an officer of the king, ma’am, sworn to act with honor,” he said. “You should be able to trust me.”

“You are a man first,” she said, thoughtfully stroking one of the shawl’s tassels between her fingers. To her he’d always be a man first, and what a shame it was that he didn’t seem to think of himself that way, too. “And you are a man who hasn’t answered my question. Can you trust me, Captain, so that I might trust you?”

“I told you, ma’am, as an officer—”

“Oh, Captain, not again,” she said. “How can you say that to me, when the others were officers, too?”

“Others, ma’am?” he asked with wary surprise.

“Oh, yes, there were three other captains before you, all old men with white hair, puffed up with their own self-importance and gold braid.” She waggled her fingers over her shoulders to mimic the heavy gold fringes on their epaulets. They had each tried to dictate to her what was proper and what wasn’t, as if they meant to replace her father. They’d lectured her about her behavior and how she’d dressed, and now—now they were lecturing someone else.

He frowned. “What became of them, these other captains?”

So the admiral hadn’t told him he hadn’t been the first choice. She was sorry for that. When she’d told him about the others, she’d only wanted him to realize how superior he was to them, not to make him feel as if he were fourth-rate. Ah, a man’s pride was such a delicate thing!

“Oh, they did not please me,” she said with airy nonchalance, trying to make light of the other men to save his feelings. “I told the admiral to send them away, because I could not trust them.”

“You dismissed them?” He sounded shocked. “Older officers, white-haired gentlemen who deserved respect for their rank and years of service? You dismissed them?”

“I didn’t,” she said, surprised he would be so upset. At least he had some pretense to a title and noble blood. The others had been disagreeable commoners, underlings, and surely his inferiors. “The admiral did. But I do not see why I am not entitled to—”

“You sent those other officers away,” he said, “and because of your whims, they’ve failed their orders. Because of you, ma’am, their lives and careers must be in rare shambles.”

“Their failure is hardly my fault!”

“Who else could be to blame?” he demanded. “How in blazes could you do that to those men, ma’am? It’s bad enough when you berate poor Lady Willoughby, but for you to ruin three honorable gentlemen officers because they did not suit you—”

“I thought I could trust you, Captain,” she said defensively. “I thought because you were as unhappy as I am, you could understand me.”

“Who in blazes says I’m unhappy?”

“You don’t have to say it, Captain!” She sliced her gloved hand through the air as if to cut through his protests. “You do not have to speak one word, either in English or in your barbarous attempt at Italian. You make all perfectly clear. You are no more pleased to be in London than I. You would much rather be back on one of your great smelly navy boats with a ruffian crew of thieves and cutpurses.”

“Ships, ma’am.” He was biting off each word. “In most cases, an English vessel of war is a ship, not a—”

“Very well, then, Captain. A ship. You would rather be in one of your great smelly navy ships than here in this carriage with me. And I see no reason to disoblige you.”

She stood upright, swaying unsteadily in the moving carriage, and thumped her knuckles on the roof of the carriage. “Driver, stop! Here, now! Stop at once!”

The captain grabbed her by the arm, trying to pull her back down on the seat so she wouldn’t fall as the carriage rumbled to a halt. Through the windows Isabella could see other carriages and chaises and shops with stylish ladies and gentlemen strolling along the pavement, enough for her to realize they were on some fashionable street. To Isabella’s satisfaction, many of those passersby were already turning to look at the commotion inside Lady Willoughby’s glossy green carriage.

The captain, of course, thought otherwise. “A moment now, ma’am,” he ordered as he tried to maneuver her back to the seat. “A moment to calm yourself.”

She gasped with indignant shock. She could not recall the last time anyone had dared restrain her like this against her will.

“I will not calm myself,” she sputtered, “because I do not need calming!”

“I won’t let you go until you agree to be reasonable, ma’am.” He held her lightly, almost gently, but there was no mistaking his strength. “I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

“The only one who’ll harm me is you,” she said, trying to wriggle free. It wasn’t easy. His hands were bigger than she’d first realized, his fingers easily spanning her arm in a way that was daunting, but oddly exciting, too. “I order you to release me, Captain, release me at once!”

“My orders from the admiralty must come first, ma’am.” He was working so hard to stop her without hurting her, that, under any other circumstances, she would have laughed out loud. “Damnation, why won’t you show a little sense and stop this?”

“Because I am a Fortunaro princess, Captain,” she said furiously, her temper finally spilling over, “and the Fortunari do whatever they please.”

Abruptly the carriage halted, throwing the captain off balance, and swiftly Isabella jerked her arm free of his grasp. She unhooked the latch on the door and shoved it open, the ribbons on her bonnet blowing up across her face as she teetered on the edge. She’d come too far to change her mind now, and before the captain could pull her back, she stepped from the carriage, her head regally high.

But she’d neglected to wait for the footman to open the step for her, and instead of descending grandly from the carriage, she pitched forward through the empty space in a tangle of red velvet and landed hard on the pavement on her hands and knees, without any grandeur at all.

“Ma’am!” At once the captain was there at her side, kneeling on the pavement beside her. “Are you injured? Should I send for a surgeon?”

“Of course I am not hurt,” she snapped, scrambling back to her feet and brushing him away as well as the two footmen. The palms of her hands stung inside her gloves and she was quite sure her knees were bruised and scraped, but she would never give him the satisfaction of admitting it. Even if a Fortunaro princess might be foolish enough to leap without looking, she would keep the resultant suffering to herself. “I am not some piece of delicate porcelain, to be shattered with such ease.”

He looked relieved. “Then let me help you back into the carriage.”

“Why should I do that?” She straightened her bonnet, retying the ribbons, and looked up at the sign over the shop before her. At least they’d stopped before one she’d plausibly visit, the windows filled with an enticement of bonnets, gloves and ribbons. “We shall go inside here, Captain, to—to Copperthwaite’s Millinery. Yes, that is my wish. A fine shop is not like an open street. There can be no danger to me inside. I shall be quite safe.”

She smiled, proud that she’d made her mouth bend around those awkward English words. Walking forward toward the shop took effort as her bruised knees protested, but through sheer will she kept her smile in place and didn’t wince. Other people were watching, curious and listening, eager to be able to describe any mistake she might make, and she was determined to earn their admiration, not their contempt.

“You can’t do this, ma’am,” said the captain in an impatient whisper as he walked beside her. “It’s not wise.”

“Then I am not wise, because I cannot see reason or cause for not entering this shop.” She was enjoying herself now, relishing the attention of the growing well-dressed crowd on the sidewalk around them, and she raised her voice so the others might hear her. “How am I to earn support for my dearest Monteverde here in London if I never show myself to the English people?”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd, and she smiled just enough to acknowledge it. This was a part of being her that she’d missed, a part that the captain couldn’t understand, and how could he, really?

One of the footmen hurried to open the shop’s door for her, and she sailed inside. Because Mama had always insisted upon having the dressmakers and jewelers and everyone else come to her at the palace, Isabella had no firsthand experience with shops, and she gazed about this one now with unabashed curiosity.

One long room was lined on either side with pale green counters, and cushioned chairs for customers. While most of the goods were hidden away in the drawers of the tall cabinets behind the counters, special selections had been artfully arranged here and there to catch a buyer’s eye: wide-brimmed leghorn hats with silk flowers, pastel kidskin gloves, veils and ribbons and stocking and garters. Isabella couldn’t imagine having such a selection to choose from, and for once it actually did seem as if the common women might have the advantage over her and her mother in the palace.

With the gracious smile still on her face, Isabella stopped just inside the doors, waiting to be properly recognized and greeted. Every shop girl had already turned to look, as had every customer, and Isabella beamed at the attention. Surely in such a center of fashion as this she would be recognized; surely no assassins could be lurking here.

An elegant older woman glided toward Isabella, the curled ribbons on her cap floating gently around her cheeks. She dipped a genteel curtsy, and Isabella nodded in return.

But Mrs. Copperthwaite wasn’t noticing. “Good day, Captain Lord Greaves, good day! We are so honored to have you visit us—a gentleman of your heroic reputation!”

Beside Isabella, the captain bowed. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “You’re far too generous with your praise. All I did was for my country, nothing that any officer of the king wouldn’t have done in my place.”

“Oh, no, Captain my lord, I would dare differ!” exclaimed Mrs. Copperthwaite. “You are a hero, Captain my lord, and I will not have you argue!”

Mrs. Copperthwaite sighed and clasped her hands before her breasts in a way that Isabella found annoyingly overwrought. A hero, a hero, thought Isabella crossly. If this captain were such a great war hero, then why was he mired here on land, making her life so miserable?

Mrs. Copperthwaite sighed again, at last recovered. “Pray, pray, what shall you have this day, Captain my lord? How might we oblige you?”

“Nothing for me, ma’am,” said the captain. Even with the shopkeeper so shamelessly fawning over him, he was still watching out for Isabella’s safety, his eyes roving all over the counters and cabinets and other customers as he looked for danger. “Though likely my sisters would disagree.”

“Then for—for your friend.” Finally Mrs. Copperthwaite turned to Isabella with a distinctly slighter curtsy. “How might we serve you, miss?”

The shop owner’s expression was respectful enough, but her appraisal was so open—taking in everything from Isabella’s heeled slippers to the plume on her hat, and especially the un-English velvet and gold gown in between—that Isabella knew at once what lay behind it. Because she wasn’t dressed like a milky-mousy English lady, she must be a—a harlot.

“I am not this man’s mistress.” Isabella drew herself up with regal disdain. “I do not know what should give you such a ridiculous idea.”

Beside her, the captain made a growling grumble deep in his throat, and already she knew what that meant, too. He wanted her to behave.

“Mrs. Copperthwaite has said nothing of the sort.” His voice had a forced lightness to it, more warning for Isabella. “She intends no insult to you. She doesn’t know who you are, that is all.”

Isabella didn’t deign to look at him. Most likely he was right about this Mrs. Copperthwaite—if the woman wished to keep her trade, she could ill afford to make any judgments about her customers—but Isabella had no wish to admit to the captain that she’d been wrong. Royalty never did that.

“Then tell her who I am, Captain,” she ordered. “Tell them all.”

His dark brows came together, and the little muscles along the line of his jaw twitched. “That would not be wise.”

“Oh, you are too stubborn!” Without thinking, she lapsed into Italian, flinging her shawl over one shoulder, tassels flying. “Haven’t we already determined that I shall never be a wise woman, not by your preposterous standards?”

Not only was his jaw twitching, but along that same jaw a mottled red flush was now spreading from the immaculate white linen of his shirt.

“Your wisdom, or lack of it, is not my affair,” he said, also in Italian. “Your welfare and safety are. Few in London know you are here, but if you choose to announce yourself like this, in the middle of Copperthwaite’s, then I’ll guarantee the scandal sheets will be filled with it tomorrow.”

“Saints in heaven, what if they are? It will still be your duty to protect me, won’t it?”

“It will,” he said, “but you’ll also make it a damned sight more difficult. Now come, you’ve done enough damage here. Back to the carriage before—”

“Oh, Your Royal Highness,” cried a startled voice in the same Italian. “It is you! Praise the merciful Mother, it is you!”

A small, dark woman in a plain seamstress’s cap and apron rushed from behind the counters toward Isabella. Her round-cheeked face and her singsong dialect could have belonged to any woman in a Monteverdian market, and because of it Isabella smiled, touched by such an unexpected reminder of home.

But before the woman came closer, the captain lunged forward and grabbed her around the waist, jerking her back against his chest. The woman shrieked and fought him, struggling to break free as he caught her right hand and held it firmly in her grasp.

“Maria!” Mrs. Copperthwaite said sharply. “Maria, stop this at once and explain yourself!”

Still the woman plunged and kicked, while only Isabella and the captain knew that she was spewing out the vilest, most profane insults imaginable against every member of the Fortunaro family. She kept the fingers of one hand clenched tightly, and as she tried to twist around toward the captain, the light caught a flash of a polished blade. Shocked, Isabella could only stand and watch, her welcoming smile now frozen on her face.

“Drop it now.” His voice was harsh, efficient. “Save yourself, and surrender.”

“To the devil with you, you English bastard!” she cried, breathing hard with desperation as she tried one last time to twist free. “You deserve to die for defending the royalist bitch!”

But the woman’s strength was spent. The captain pried the woman’s clasped fingers open, and a sharp-bladed pair of sewing scissors dropped to the floor with a clatter. Gasps and ladylike murmurs of horrified surprise rippled through the other customers and shop girls, while the other seamstresses crowded in the doorway to the workroom they were never supposed to leave.

“Send for the constable,” said the captain. “Now.” Obeying instantly, one of the shop girls ran into the street.

Two of the footmen had hurried to relieve him, each taking one of the woman’s arms to hold her until the constable came. Calmly the captain collected the scissors from the floor where they’d fallen, and wrapped them in his handkerchief before he slipped the little bundle of evidence into his pocket. He ignored the woman now, her cap gone and her hair bedraggled and tears of fury streaming down her face as she continued her stream of curses and threats.

But Isabella didn’t have the power to ignore it. She felt the woman’s hatred wash over her like a wave, the intensity of it shocking and confusing, too. Then she noticed the crude necklace that had slipped free of the woman’s kerchief when she’d struggled with Tom. Only Isabella had recognized the tiny triangle of twigs bound with red thread on a black cord.

Isabella knew the symbol, yet she didn’t: a family sign, Anna had told her. But what kind of family—what kind of violence—would link Anna to this woman, and now to Isabella herself?

She felt shaken, her knees trembling and weak beneath her. She’d always believed her father was a good man, and a good king, as well. Buonaparte was the despot, not Father, and as soon as the French could be driven out, the people would rejoice and welcome Father back to his throne. That was the truth, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

Because of Father—because of her entire family—this woman had wanted her dead, and if the captain had not jumped between them, she would have succeeded. Isabella had never seen anyone risk their own life for hers, and the responsibility of it scared her, too. What if the captain had been hurt or even killed trying to save her, simply because she’d insisted on being unwise?

Yet when he came to her now, she saw only concern for her welfare in his face: no reproach, none of the blame that she knew she deserved.

“You are unharmed, ma’am?” he asked her in a gruff whisper. He still spoke in Italian, for her, and that small thoughtfulness was nearly enough to make her weep. “You’ll be safe enough from her now, you know.”

“Oh, Captain my lord, I am so sorry this has happened!” Mrs. Copperthwaite was flushed and distraught, seeing a scandal that could destroy her business. “How was I to know the creature was mad? She has not been a fortnight in my employ, and I only took her in from pity, and because her stitching was so fine, but now—now the only place fit for her will be the gaol!”

“The woman must be tried under your English law.” Isabella spoke again in English. She knew she must be strong and calm, a Fortunaro lioness, and not let anyone see the terror that still hammered in her chest. “Then I am sure she will receive the punishment she deserves.”

“You show great character and courage, miss.” Mrs. Copperthwaite’s smile had a desperate edge. “No wonder Captain his Lord Greaves counts you among his acquaintance, miss.”

The seamstress twisted again in the footmen’s grasp, just enough so she could spit at Isabella’s feet.

“Ha, she is no miss!” she shouted in English, making sure everyone would hear. “You do not know who she is? You do not know?”

“Quiet,” ordered the captain sharply. “You’ve said enough.”

But the woman only laughed, even as the two men that held her half dragged her toward the door.

“She is the only daughter of the villainous royal oppressor of the Monteverdian people!” she shouted over her shoulder. “She is the Princess Isabella di Fortunaro, may she burn forever in the hottest flames of hell!”