“You must help yourself, Miss Speedwell—but do so now if you wish a chocolate. It will not be possible once you have begun to dress.”
I lifted the lid of the box to find a selection of violet and rose creams—Stoker’s favorites.
“These are rather too rich for me,” I said politely, thinking of the delicacies Julien had pressed upon me during luncheon. “Would you care for one, Baroness?”
The baroness’s nostrils flared in an expression akin to outraged horror, but she managed a polite refusal. “This is not possible, Fraulein. It is not my place to eat with my princess unless I am invited.”
“But I am not your princess,” I pointed out. “And I have invited you.”
She drew herself up, her posture impeccably straight. “I think it best if I treat you as I would Her Serene Highness in order to preserve this masquerade.”
The baroness bent again to her task.
“You are very fond of your princess,” I ventured.
She carefully plucked a bit of fluff from the skirt of the gown before replying. “I have been in the service of the Crown all my life. It is my honor to serve.”
“How is it that all of you speak such good English?”
“The princess’s great-grandmother was English, one of your own princesses—Sophia Amelia, a sister of your King George III, the poor mad one,” the baroness said as she moved a pair of evening slippers exactly perpendicular to the end of the bed.
I had known that one of King George’s sisters had married the Danish king and had a very bad time of it—husband run insane, lover beheaded, early death from fever, that sort of thing—but I had not realized any other of his relations had married onto the Continent. He was my great-great-grandfather, but I had scarcely given him a thought other than as the sad old man who had lost the colonies and himself gone mad, ending his life stone deaf and blind to boot, wandering around Windsor Great Park in his nightgown and talking to the oaks. It gave one pause to realize such possibilities were lurking in the family tree.
“Was your English princess happy in the Alpenwald?” I asked.
The baroness blinked. “Happy? What do you mean?”
“Simply that,” I said. “Was she content to live so far from home? Did she love her husband? Her children?”
The questions seemed to put her at a loss and she struggled to answer. “I do not know how to reply to this, Fraulein. It is not for princesses to be happy. Their duty is to rule, to set an example.”
It sounded ghastly, I decided. “Did she have a say in the marriage or was she simply shipped off?”
“Shipped off?” The idiom seemed to puzzle her.
“Yes, carted to the Alpenwald like so much fruit for sale,” I said, a trifle tartly. “It is a barbaric custom, the exchanging of royal daughters in the manner of livestock trading for the purpose of sealing treaties. Was that her lot?”
“There was a friendship established between our two nations,” the baroness admitted. “But this was a good thing. Your kings named George brought German values to England. We understand that.”
“And did the princess bring English values to the Alpenwald?” I asked.
She primmed her mouth. “It is not, you will forgive me, the place of the English to teach the Alpenwalders anything. We were good to your princess.”
She turned away, obviously offended. I hastened to make amends. “I did not intend any insult,” I assured her. “I merely wondered if she did a good job of things, if she ruled well.”
The baroness said nothing for a long moment, continuing to straighten and tidy, her chin high in her wounded dignity. I ought to have remembered, with countries—like men—the more diminutive the stature, the more overweening the pride.
Finally, she unbent a little. “She was only a consort,” she told me. “It was not her destiny to rule, but she was popular. She was a pious woman and conducted herself with dignity at all times. There was a grandeur to her that was deeply respected by her people.”
Dignity and piety, I thought ruefully. If those were the qualities respected most by the Alpenwalders, it was a devilishly good thing I was only pretending at being their princess. I gave her a winsome smile. “And is her granddaughter much like her, the Princess Gisela, I mean?”
To my surprise, the baroness did not parry. She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I wish she were! To run away like this, so indiscreet, so irresponsible!”
She collapsed onto the recamier, head in her hands. I rose and went to her, putting a hand to her shoulder. “You are obviously very fond of your princess. Have you been her lady-in-waiting long?”
“Since her accession,” she said with obvious pride as she dropped her hands. “But I was her governess before that. I came to her when she was fourteen after I finished my duties as governess to her cousin, Duke Maximilian. I have always served the Alpenwalder royal family. And now—” She broke off, clearly overcome.
“Do not worry so, Baroness. I am sure it will all be quite all right in the end.”
She lifted her head, moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes. “You are an optimist, Fraulein. You are very young.”
I shrugged. “It has been my experience that things generally work out for the best.”
“For the best!” She gave a hollow laugh. “How can that be? If she does not return—”
I tightened my grip on her shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. “She will. We can have no doubt.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “‘We,’ Fraulein? Already you speak like a royal.”
“I have a very good tutor, Baroness,” I told her seriously. “Now, come and teach me how to wave.”
She surged up, horror blanching her cheeks. “One does not wave at the theatre,” she said sternly. With that she launched into a lengthy explanation of the correct way to acknowledge the public in a theatre—“a slow inclination of the head from the neck beginning with the most august personages—”
When she finished, she led me to the bed, where the gown lay waiting. The fabric shimmered, the heavy silk woven with some starry silver bits that punctuated the extraordinary blue of the background.
“It is such a glorious color.” I breathed at last, putting out a fingertip to touch the folds of the skirt. I trailed down to a silver sequin. A rope of these had been stitched around the base of the skirt, edging the train as well as the neckline.
“It is Alpenwalder blue,” she told me. “The color reserved for our royalty as it most closely mimics that of the heavens above our country.”