Love by the Morning Star (29 page)

“Hannah, do you think they'd have a corset in the village?” she asked on the day of Teddy's homecoming. “A real honest-to-goodness corset with laces that I could make as tight as I like? I have to fit into my dress tomorrow!”

Hannah gave her a sympathetic smile. Teddy had not written—that was no surprise—but she'd heard from kitchen scuttlebutt that he would be stopping at Windsor first and bringing up a party to stay the week—several young royals, including Waltraud's HRH. (Though he would certainly come with his wife, not his mistress.) Hardy would be coming too, Sally had told her. He'd been recruited to join the Ministry of Agriculture to advise them on alternative crops in case of war. And now that Germany had invaded Poland in defiance of England and France, war was all but inevitable.

“Do you think it is such a good idea to compress yourself like that?” Hannah asked. “In your condition? You might do harm.”

“In my condition?” Anna repeated sharply. “What are you saying?”

“Well, you had been meeting . . . someone. And you last saw him nearly four months ago, so it is only natural that you are starting to show.”

Anna buried her face in her hands and sat down heavily on the bed. Pregnant! She hadn't let herself think about the possibility, telling herself that it was only nerves that upset her cycle, made her eat too much. She was mortified, and yet . . . it seemed just one more protective layer of security. No matter what Teddy found out about her, he'd never cast off the woman who was carrying his heir.

Hannah sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. “It's not as bad as all that.”

“No,” she sniffed. “We're getting married, you know. He will be announcing our engagement today.”

“What a coincidence!” Hannah cried. “So will—” She was interrupted by a rap at the door. A housemaid came in with a letter on a silver salver.

Anna looked at the envelope with a tense expression, then relaxed. It was only a note from Lady Liripip, who would rather send a servant on an errand than walk to the next wing to tell someone something.

Thank goodness
, Anna thought. Too many letters had been from the NAFF brute, who had established himself in a cottage in the village. One was simply threatening. The next insisted on a meeting, and when she ignored it another threat came. Finally she slipped to the village to meet him and did her best to play on his more tender emotions, crying and pleading. Apparently he had no tender emotions, so she tried another tack, swearing she wanted to serve the cause, but was afraid she'd make a mess of it again. There was some sense in that, and she eventually managed to convince him that the NAFF would be better served if he did the killing. But the man insisted she must get the king alone. When was he coming? When she confessed she hadn't managed to arrange it yet, he grabbed her arm and dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her inner wrist. “Then arrange it,” he'd said coldly. “Soon.”

She did her best, writing to Teddy repeatedly, telling him what an honor it would be to have the king in attendance for her engagement announcement, but he couldn't guarantee anything, and Anna was feeling desperate.

Now, though, the gods seemed to be conspiring in her favor. She tore open Lady Liripip's letter and read the lines.

 

His Majesty and family are attending. Due to the trouble on the Continent they are sending their children to Windsor and visiting here en route
.

Wear wool, not silk, so you don't overshadow the queen
.

 

Hannah read it over her shoulder. “I would wear silk anyway,” she said, rummaging through Anna's closet. “This one, with the drape. It is more forgiving of your delicate condition.”

When Hannah had gone, Anna penned a quick note to the NAFF brute and had a boy deliver it to the village. It said, in their agreed code:
The stoat has flushed the leveret
.

The party would provide the perfect opportunity. She had hoped the king would come that day, and they had planned for the possibility. The NAFF man had marked his place of concealment. All of the gamekeepers and groundskeepers would be at the party, for Teddy had written to his mother that he had good news to relate and insisted that it must be shared with everyone at Starkers. The estate would be unguarded, and if she could only lure the king a few yards away from the others, it could be done. She hardly cared anymore. So long as it was not by her own hand, so long as she got Teddy.

 

“Y
OU'VE BEEN SALTING THAT SOUP
for five minutes!” Sally snipped, and gave Hannah a gentle buffet with the back of a ladle. Hannah was drifting through the day in a happy daze. Already she'd confused baking powder and baking soda, and scalded the milk, and absently chopped the walnuts into a fine powder. “Go and change into your clean dress,” Sally said, wiping her hands on her apron. “They'll be calling us out to the garden soon, and you're no earthly use here. I can get by without you.”

Hannah changed into her slightly less hideous print kitchen dress and scurried out to the garden, where she could observe the Liripips and their guests finishing their informal dinner on the lawn. In a moment dessert and coffee would be served, and after that there would be dancing, but in between Teddy planned to make his declaration. He hadn't told her, of course, not exactly, but all the staff knew there was going to be a big announcement. Teddy had arrived early that morning and as before, she hadn't seen him. But that was all right. After tonight everything would be fine. More than fine. She hugged herself, took a deep breath.

There he was, wiping his smiling mouth with his linen napkin, sitting between Anna and a pretty woman with a wry, lopsided smile who she thought might be the Duchess of Kent, Georgie's patient wife. Just another moment and they would be united forever. This meant more to her than any marriage ceremony. That was for other people. This public acknowledgment was for her. Oh, how they would joke of it in their later years. She would mock-scold him before their children, their grandchildren.
One moment I was the kitchen maid; the next, your mother
. Of course, people always fudge the biology when they speak to children . . .

The tables were efficiently cleared, and then the tables themselves were whisked away. Dancing would soon begin.

She saw Anna—in a flowing eau de nil dress that didn't reveal a single scandal—sidle up to the king, who listened with well-bred patience to whatever she was saying.
Poor king
, Hannah thought. That very morning Anna had said she didn't see why everyone was upset with Germany invading Poland, when they were practically the same country anyway. Hannah guessed from His Majesty's slightly pained expression that Anna might be saying something similar now. She seemed to be directing the king to another corner of the garden. What was she up to? Hannah wondered. Seduction? She could never be so brazen. Maybe just angling for a royal engagement present. Oh, and there was Hardy, standing with the other servants, though he technically wasn't one anymore. He was splendidly dressed with a cream-colored rose boutonniere, and he rocked from toe to heel, grinning like an idiot, trying to catch Anna's eye. Why didn't she look at him? Even a king shouldn't distract her from her true love. Anna had her hand on the king's arm, pulling, and his patience looked to be wearing thin. An equerry was approaching, uncertain whether to be amused or alarmed.

The other servants and staff were gathering, lining up in order of importance, waiting for the announcement. By the time Hannah noticed, it was too late to join them without causing a disruption, so she stayed where she was, half hidden in the shrubbery.

Lord Liripip pinged his fingernail against a wineglass, and all was silent except for the trill of songbirds.

“Most honored guests,” Lord Liripip began, rising unsteadily to his feet. “My son will have news of his own, I am told.” He cast a deliberate wink at Teddy, who blushed. The guests laughed politely. “But age before beauty, pearls before swine and all that rot, what? Please join me in celebrating the fruit of my labors—and right fruity they are, too, as you will discover for the mere sum of seven pounds sterling, paid to the publisher or your favorite bookseller. In short . . .” He summoned Coombe, who staggered forth under the weight of a massive tome, practically dictionary-size. “I present
The Scandalous Memoirs of a Life Well Lived
, by yours truly. Printed, I might add, in large type for all of my contemporaries who might otherwise miss out on some of the dirtiest parts.”

Here the king had to physically shake off Anna, who looked on the verge of tears and kept glancing into the shrubbery in Hannah's direction.

“If you will indulge me,” Lord Liripip went on, “I will regale you with one of the choicest bits of my history. Nothing lewd,” he added, nodding to the queen and her charming daughters, Lilibet and little Margaret.

“Just about the time I had begun to grow weary from a lifetime of amorous vigor—no, no, I shan't go beyond euphemisms,” he said to the tight-lipped queen. “I met a girl. Ah, what a beginning for a tale: I met a girl.”

And he told them about the sprightly younger daughter of one of the county families. Her irrepressible joy had won him, as had her singing. “She was a handful, leading the lads on a merry chase, she and that sister of hers. Elspeth was the real hellion, but Caroline was the one for me. I pursued her, like a winsome little fox, that girl half my age, and thought I won her. I loved her. Loved her more than any being on earth, until my son was born.”

My mother
, Hannah realized.

“I loved Caroline Curzon, and she left me. Ought to hate her, what? But no, nothing's changed. Can't have her, can't forget her.” He whipped out a large handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.

Lady Liripip empurpled like a beetroot.

“She asked a favor, though. Went down on her knees. Marry my sister, she said. Elspeth was the wild one, and she'd been a mite careless.” He described a big belly with his hands. “Save the family honor, she says. What can I do? I'd do anything for Caroline. I marry the girl, and she dies, and the other man's child dies, and here I am, a washed-up seducer stuck with this old piece of gloom.” He nodded to Lady Liripip. “I mended my ways, and live through my memory. Hundreds of girls, all in here.” He tapped the tome. “But none to match my Caroline. Now, unless I miss my guess, where the father failed, the son will succeed. Teddy, my boy, tell us!” Lord Liripip's fallen old face was alight with happiness and hope.

Teddy beamed at his father, not at all distressed at his mother's putting-down. “Gladly,” he said, “but first, champagne all around.”

Soon guests and staff alike had glasses. Hardy noticed Hannah half concealed in the bushes and snagged one for her.

“Is it what I think it is?” he asked.

She nodded.

“To you, then!” he said, raising his glass to drink.

“No!” she whispered with a little laugh, catching his arm too late. “Not yet. It's bad luck to drink before the official toast.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Though I doubt anything could spoil your happiness. Or mine.”

“Double congratulations are in order for you,” Hannah said slyly.

“What do you mean?”

But just then Teddy smiled at the assembly and said, “I am young, and have not yet had experience to fill more than a pamphlet.” He looked at his father's memoirs. “But I was lucky enough to find love early. You will say she is beautiful, and that is of course true, but I did not fall in love with her beauty. That will change and fade. I love her for her lovely thoughts, for her ravishing understanding, for her pulchritudinous compassion. She sees the world clearly, how it is and how it should be. I want to join my mind to hers, my soul to hers, to make this world a better place.”

Hannah, her face warm and her eyes stinging, felt like the light princess from the fairy tale, untethered to the base earth. She gazed at him, waiting for him to seek her out. Could he see her? She stepped out of the shrubbery.

Teddy reached for the woman beside him, and took her gloved hand. “My friends, meet the woman I will marry.”

“What's going on?” Hardy asked, his fists clenching.

Hannah didn't hear him. Gravity returned, leadening her heart so she felt she must sink into the earth.
He lied to me. It was all a lie
. The trill of birdsong, the drone of crickets, became oppressive, deafening, filling her ears. She could hear nothing but the sound of her heart breaking.

“I lied,” Teddy said just then, seeming to echo her thoughts. “I said I didn't fall in love with her beauty, but there is one part of her that is absolutely irresistible.” He grinned at the sniggers from the younger guests, and, shockingly, even the king, who caught himself and changed it to a cough.

He pulled off one of Anna's gloves. “Do you see this here, this little thumb? This is the sweetest spot in the world. There is a little scar, just here.”

He caressed Anna's thumb, then stopped short, bemused. He dropped that hand and caught the other, laughing at himself as he tugged at that glove. “I mean this hand, of course. I fell in love with her thumb, so I had to have the rest of her.”

He bent to kiss her scar, but when he raised his head he looked at Anna as if she were a stranger.

“Where is the scar?” he asked in hushed perplexity. “Where is the woman I love?”

All of the hints, all of the inconsistencies, which had been like so many scattered pebbles underfoot, now coalesced into a mountain. Yet even from that high vantage he could not quite see the truth.

He looked at the woman he thought he loved, the woman he had just asked so publicly to be his. Each of her features seemed separate now, not a lovely whole. Yes, that was a fine nose. Yes, large blue eyes certainly had their appeal. But they didn't combine to make a woman anymore. They were like things at a jumble sale, valueless and piecemeal.