Love by the Morning Star (23 page)

“Liripip claims you're a notorious courtesan. He might have been demobbed eons ago, but I trust his judgment where women are concerned, and if he says you're worth it, I figured I'd get in before some other fellow does. I take it he was, er, mistaken?”

“Rather. I'm an opera singer. Well, cabaret-
cum
-opera. I want to start singing here in England, but of course I know no one, and a girl who works in the kitchen all day can't exactly go out and audition. I thought you meant to hear me sing and mention my name around. I'm really rather good. I was supposed to join the Vienna Opera soon, but . . .” She cocked her head up at him. “If you have an apartment and a coupe free and are looking for a notorious German courtesan, I know someone who would require absolutely no training whatsoever. Do you spy that Rhinemaiden in the see-through dress?”

She promised to introduce them, but Georgie wanted one more dance. “There's no sham with you, is there, and no shame. How very unusual. My wife would like you after all, I think, particularly if we're not to be lovers.” He added wistfully, “We're not, are we?”

She glanced unconsciously toward Teddy, who had partnered Sally for the shag and now sought out Anna again. Everyone was surreptitiously watching the lovely little night-and-starlight girl charm His Highness; everyone except Teddy, who was looking like a mooncalf into Anna's eyes, full of his new understanding of her, thinking of exactly how he would propose.

“Ah,” Georgie said. “You
do
know that the best cure for unrequited love is a good—” But what exactly his prescription was, Hannah never learned, for the shag transitioned into a Lindy that was as improvisational as the music itself, and she had to give herself over entirely to the sudden dips and air steps and, dramatically at the end, a flip that made all the other guests gasp. She was in Berlin again, in the dance clubs she knew so well, with her family and friends and cabaret coworkers all around her. For a moment her body freed her mind and she was passionately happy.

Then the music stopped, and she remembered.

Her friends were back in Germany, dead, fled—who knew? Her family . . .

She panted in the middle of the mostly cleared floor. Only the youngest guests had remained for the modern “rude American dances.” Another waltz was beginning, and Hannah recognized the opening measures of the
Wiener Bonbons
. Lord Liripip must have ordered it specifically for her. Had he really thought her a prostitute? No, what had Georgie said, a courtesan? Did he really not know who she was, or had that wicked Lady Liripip lied to him, telling him the daughter of his former love was a prostitute?

It is not right that the world is so full of wicked people
, Hannah thought. No, she amended almost immediately, looking at Lord Liripip lounging in a chair, looking inordinately pleased with himself.
There are vastly more kind people than evil people. It's only that they let the wicked people get away with so much
.
A great wonderful world, and what does it do about Hitler? A family of decent people, and what do they do about Lady Liripip? Nothing
.

Hannah was tired of waiting for the rest of the world to do something. There wasn't much she could personally do about Nazis, she had no real idea how to help her parents, but she could defy Lady Liripip. Then Teddy would have to defy her too . . . or lose Hannah.

She led Georgie to Waltraud and made a quick introduction. They took to each other right away, each with a frank understanding of what they could do for, and get from, the other. Waltraud hooked her pinky in His Highness's and pulled him toward a curtained alcove.

“Have fun,” Hannah said. “I'll be back in a moment.” She gave Georgie a peck on the cheek, which would appear, in anonymous form, in the next day's society column.

Hannah weaved through the dancers, stopping directly before Teddy, who clasped Anna by the hand and hip. She didn't know what she would say, but she had to speak now, while her courage was strong.
I love you
might be a good way to start.
I love you, and you said you love me, and you have to tell your mother now. I do not wish to make a scene, but love is a spectacle; not a secret but a thing for the world
.

It sounded very good in her head, but all she managed, under Teddy's perplexed half smile and Anna's look of outright hostility (for Teddy had been murmuring something promising in her ear), was, “Teddy, I—”

Then came the strident voice Hannah had rather suspected would be doing quite a bit of shouting . . . only not so soon.

“Ingrate!” Lady Liripip screeched, pointing a
j'accuse
finger at Hannah from across the room. “Criminal! Call the police at once!”

Hannah looked at Lady Liripip in alarm. Was the woman not only unkind, but positively mad? She had hiked up her mauve beaded gown and was charging at Hannah, her finger still jabbing the air in her direction.

“She is a kitchen maid, an insolent trull who should have been fired weeks ago. I let her stay out of the kindness of my heart”—here Hannah could not suppress a little snort—“and she repays me with base treachery and theft!”

“Lady Liripip,” Hannah began, thinking she might explain that she was not stealing a son but giving a daughter-in law. But she was not allowed to continue.

“That wretched creature has stolen my pearls!”

S
INCE THERE WERE MEMBERS
of the royal family in attendance, there were several unobtrusive muscular types who lingered on the fringes waiting to tackle anyone who threatened the line of succession. Hearing the alarm raised, these moved in like sharks scenting blood, surrounding Hannah, who stood alone.

“These are my pearls,” she said, doing her best to sound calm and reasonable, though she was both frightened and furious. “At least, not
exactly
mine, although . . .”

“You see, she admits she has stolen them. Police!”

Constable Bates, who had been hired to keep the village riffraff out, heard the call and asked what seemed to be the trouble.

“I told the maids to clean my pearls—an heirloom set, you see how perfect they are. Then afterward no one could find them.”

“They
are
mine!” Hannah said, trembling, outraged.

“She says they're hers,” the constable said with a shrug. He'd been the object of too much condescension and even outright rudeness from Lady Liripip to take her side readily. Besides, the girl she was accusing looked like a princess.

“How could they be hers, you dimwit! She's a
kitchen
maid. Kitchen maids don't own pearls. Get them off her before they get filthy.” She made a snatch at them, and Hannah backed out of reach, right into Teddy's arms.

“Help me,” she whispered to him, but he only gave her an uncomfortable smile and gestured to the constable. Hannah felt her throat tighten, and for a moment she was sure she'd never breathe again. She felt the tears begin to burn behind her eyelids, but she caught Lady Liripip's malevolent glare and swore she'd die before she shed them in front of that woman.

“Let's take them off now, shall we, missy?” the constable said coaxingly. “Don't worry—we'll get to the bottom of it.” He reached for the dangling strands, but she jerked away.

“They're my mother's!” she shouted. “
She
knows that!” She pointed her own accusing finger at Lady Liripip, who rounded on her in fury.

“If you won't do your duty, Constable, I will,” she said, and snaked her gaunt, clawlike hand out, catching one of the magnificent strands. She pulled at it, ripping it free and tearing Hannah's dress half off her shoulder. The rope broke and pearls scattered and fell, bouncing and rolling across the ballroom.

“No!” Hannah cried. The pearls were so connected to her mother, it felt as if she had been violently ripped from a maternal embrace. She fell to her knees, slithering among legs, hunting them down one by one, while Lady Liripip continued to screech and the gossip columnists filed away every thrilling detail for their papers.

Above her, Hannah heard Teddy say, “Come away from all this fuss, Anna.”

After that, even pride couldn't burn away her tears. Constable Bates took her by the shoulders and helped her up, only to have her fall weeping against his chest.

He patted her back soothingly, which was not at all how he had been trained to deal with dangerous jewel thieves. “Don't cry, my dear. Prison ain't such a bad place. They feed you well, at least, and teach you a useful trade.” Unable to quiet Hannah's increasing hysterics, he requisitioned a room in which to question her, and then pointedly slammed the door in Lady Liripip's face.

“He didn't even care!” Hannah moaned when they were alone, much to Bates's confusion and consternation. “I am nothing to him.” She buried her face in her hands. “He said so many pretty words, and they are lies—all lies!”

“Who's that now, your partner in crime? If you were coerced, you can make a plea and the scoundrel will do the time. Now then, tell me everything and it will go better for you.”

She did, treating him like a confessor. As the tears gave way to hiccups, she told him of Germany, of her lovely mother and gallant father, of her love for Teddy. By the time she was done, the grizzled old constable's eyes were positively dewy.

“The blighter,” he whispered. “The absolute rotter. Forget about the toffs, miss. I have a son, now, would be proud to know such a girl as you. At least, if you really aren't a thief. Tell me how you came by these pearls.”

Before she could speak, there was a sharp rap at the door, and Lady Liripip stuck her beak in. “What's taking you so long? I demand my pearls back!”

Bates excused himself and left one of the royal bodyguards to watch over Hannah (and the pearls).

“Can you describe the pearls in question, ma'am?” he asked Lady Liripip when they were alone, deliberately neglecting the “Lady” as she so deliberately had left off “Constable.”

“They are . . . pearls,” she snipped. “Surely you've seen pearls before, if only the costume variety. These are similar, though better, and worth more than you'd make in twenty years. They have been in the family for six generations.”

“Then I must say it was rather careless of you to mislay them,” he said blandly. “Can you identify them with any more precision? Length, perhaps, or number? Type of clasp? Size?”

“They are pearls, you imbecile,” she shouted. “Lots and lots of pearls, and they're mine! I want her taken into custody. What do I pay you for, if not to arrest a criminal from under my own roof?” She stomped her foot.

“The county pays me, ma'am, to uphold the law.” With that he excused himself, smirking, as she sputtered behind him. He sincerely hoped the girl had not stolen the pearls.

When he rejoined Hannah he asked her again, very gently, to take off her pearls. She handed over the two remaining strands around her neck, but when she reached up to uncoil the pearls gleaming like stars in her hair, he shook his head and said, “Not just yet. There may be dancing left in your night, and you don't want to be mussed.”

Constable Bates examined the pearls closely.

“Your mother, what is her name?”

“Caroline Morgenstern, née Curzon.”

“I remember her. A bonny girl.”

“Onstage she goes by the name Cora Pearl. Like the, um . . .” There had been too much talk of courtesans that day.

“Exactly.” He held one of the clasps very close to his eye. Engraved in minuscule script were the initials CP inside a heart. On another necklace he found the name Cora.

“These are very fine pearls, my dear,” he said, carefully draping them over her head and settling them, with paternal disinterest, against the soft, creamy skin of her bare back. He gathered up all of the loose pearls and broken segments and put them in one of the evidence bags he kept in his pocket. “You should take great care of them. Particularly in a house where valuable things seem to vanish.”

He gave her a little pat on her upturned head.

“I'm free to go?” she asked.

“Unless you'd care to give me the next dance. But no, I'm on duty, and I must go break the happy news to Her Ladyship that she does not harbor thieves under her roof.”

“You won't tell them, will you? About . . .” She gulped. “About Teddy?”

“Not a word, miss. Now go back to your party. There are plenty of young men for you there. Men who will stand by you.”

But Hannah did not return to the ball. How could she, when the man who said he loved her, who swore that he was hers, forever, did not so much as lift a finger to come to her rescue when she was being dragged away by the police?

“He looked at me as if I were nothing,” she fumed to herself in her room, weeping and raging all at once. She flung the pearls onto her narrow bed. “There he was, a toff among toffs, hanging on Anna because she is blond and English and Aryan. Yes, Aryan! That's what it comes down to. I'm foreign, poor, a Jew. That makes me good enough to talk to when no one can see, but to acknowledge me in front of his family and friends—impossible.
Scheisse!
”

She slipped out of the dress—carefully, because she would give it back to Waltraud, who might be able to use it as a cocktail dress now that it was too short for an evening gown.

“Stupid,
stupid
me,” she wailed as she stomped around her room, fury winning for a moment. “And stupid,
stupid
him. I cannot stay here any longer. What a fool I was to think that I could possibly be accepted here. Though my mother warned me, and Lady Liripip wrote that horrible letter, I was convinced it was a Wodehouse comedy, so very amusing and English, full of obstacles easily overcome. But she is a witch, and Teddy is an invertebrate, and I do not belong here.”