“Elle! Elle!” I turned to find the young prince and princess riding toward me.
They rode rather staid looking ponies, a fortunate thing since Princess Rose was bouncing in her saddle with excitement in exactly the sort of way Arvin had described. Prince Henry appeared to be putting effort into a good seat, looking very proper beside his younger sister.
A groom and three guards rode behind them, the guards looking alert and the groom long-suffering. Both children pulled up in front of us. Colin and the prince assessed each other with identical expressions—rank was only a small consideration when it came to two young boys weighing each other’s relative attributes.
“Mama says you come from the new kingdoms,” Rose said, her attention still on me. “Like Princess Giselle.” She wrinkled her little nose. “But I don’t think Giselle likes children. She always gives me short answers and then walks away.”
Her brother broke off his staring match with Colin to admonish her.
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Rose! She’s our guest.”
Rose just wrinkled her nose all the way into an angry pout. “But it’s true! Mama and Papa say it’s important to be truthful.”
He frowned at her. “Yes, but that’s not all Mama says. She’s always telling you that it’s important for a princess to be courteous and considerate to everyone.” He glanced quickly at me, as if remembering his sister’s words on the importance of truth, and added, “And princes, too, of course.”
Rose gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes. “It’s just that I wanted to hear about the twins.” She turned back to me. “Have you met them?”
“She means our cousins,” Henry explained. “Aunt Lily and Aunt Sophie live in the new kingdoms, and they both have twins.”
“Their names are Hope and Owen, and Grace and Arthur, and they’re two and a half, and I love them so much,” Rose declared in a rush.
“Actually we’ve never met them,” Henry said.
“I still love them,” Rose declared defiantly. “They’re my only cousins.”
“You’re such a—” But Henry cut himself off before uttering whatever insult he had intended to direct at his sister. Perhaps he had remembered the difficult requirement for a prince to always be courteous—even to a younger sister.
I hid a smile, thinking of the lessons of my own mother and how difficult they had sometimes been to remember at his age.
“Grandmama says we may visit, but not until next year, probably,” Rose said despondently. “A year is a long time. And it may be even longer.”
“Yes, it is a long time,” I agreed, well remembering how long the years had seemed as a young child. “And it’s hard to wait.”
“So have you met them?” Rose asked, not to be diverted from her original purpose.
I bit my lip. I had. Several times, in fact. The four of them together were almost overwhelmingly cheeky and adorable. But how much could I admit in my guise as lady’s maid? How much would the enchantment allow?
“I have seen them,” I said after a moment. “Last year. They were walking and chattering away in baby talk. And they were very cute.”
Rose giggled and clapped her hands.
“Can they say my name? Auntie Lily promised she would teach them all to say my name.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. But I’m sure if Princess Lily said she would, then she has.”
Rose scrunched her face up in delight this time instead of annoyance. “Two of the nobles who live at the palace have babies, and they’re so cute!”
I couldn’t help but smile at her high-pitched interpretation of the usual adult response to babies. Did she really think them cute, or had she just learned that was the way you were supposed to talk about babies?
“Don’t you have any other cousins here?” I asked. “Second cousins, perhaps?”
The prince sighed. “Rose is wrong, we do have other cousins. Mama’s brothers have children, but they’re all older and live very far away in the middle of a wood and don’t like the city at all. Aunt Lily and Aunt Sophie were our only aunts here in Arcadie, but then they moved away. And Papa doesn’t have any cousins.”
That surprised me. My own palace seemed full of distant second and third cousins.
“Grandfather only had one sister, and she doesn’t live in Arcadia,” Henry explained. “Even Papa never knew her. I think she sailed somewhere.” He looked at me brightly. “Maybe she went to the new kingdoms. Do you know her? Her name was…” He hesitated, as if trying to remember. “Princess Mina. My tutor made me memorize our whole family tree last year. It was awfully boring.”
“If she sailed away somewhere before your father was born, she can’t have come to my lands,” I said. “The passage was blocked with storms until only five or six years ago. She must have sailed to Lanover or Northhelm perhaps.”
“But then she would have visited,” Henry objected.
“Maybe you should ask your father,” I said quickly, rather afraid that “sailed away” was the euphemism he had been given for his great-aunt’s death. Perhaps her ship had been lost at sea.
Their groom cleared his throat loudly, and the prince twitched, turning to his sister.
“Come on, Rose. We shouldn’t be keeping the ponies standing so long.”
Rose sighed but tugged at her rein to direct her pony’s head around. As she rode back toward the groom and guards, she called a farewell over her shoulder. I waved at them both before glancing at Colin.
He watched them ride away with an expression I couldn’t read. Was he like Sierra, wishing for a life that wasn’t his?
“Do you ever wish you could trade places and be a prince for a while?” I asked.
He started and turned to me with a scoffing look. “Me? A prince? Hardly! My mam says they spend all their time at stuffy parties wearing uncomfortable clothes.”
“Your mam is a wise woman.”
If Sierra’s mother had told her the same thing, I might not be in my current predicament. Although I reminded myself that Sierra clearly had some greater purpose than merely stealing my position, even if I hadn’t worked out what it could be yet.
Colin snorted. “Besides, who’d want to be a noble when it means you might get poisoned?”
“Poisoned?” I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
His eyes widened with a look almost like relish. “You mean you haven’t heard?” There was no mistaking the glee in his voice at finding someone who hadn’t heard whatever shocking news he was about to impart.
“That’s why I came back early,” he said. “Everything exciting is happening here. Plus, I’d had enough of nursing Betty.”
“You mean your family is still sick?” I drew back instinctively, but he waved a dismissive hand.
“No need to fret. I had the spots years ago.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” I said, a little doubtfully.
“You didn’t hear me complaining like Betty, neither,” he said, distracted momentarily by the memory of his irritating sister.
You know, Arvin said, ambling back over from where he had been nibbling at a patch of sweet grass Colin found for him, I did hear a groom this morning saying something about poison. Sounded like a lot of nonsense to me.