Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) (3 page)

“He doesn’t look very good,” she said.

“I know,” Oliver snapped.

“Well, why don’t you let me go so that you can find help for him faster?”

“No,” Oliver said. He waved the gun at her. “Wade across. Go on.”

“No, thank you,” she said primly. “I don’t want to get my shoes wet.”

Oliver was about to argue with her, but she crossed the stream in one fantastic leap. On the far side, she adjusted her cloak and waited for him with arched brows as he trudged across through the water and up the other bank, panting already from Simon’s weight on his back.

“That was amazing,” Simon mumbled. “Not you, Oliver. Her.”

“It wasn’t that far,” she said, dismissive. “Listen, I could still find my own way back to the road. I won’t tell anyone your names.”

“Don’t know my name,” Simon said. “It’s Simon, though.” He sounded like he was becoming feverish.

“It’s nice to meet you, Simon,” the girl said. “I’m Petunia.”

“Petunia?” Oliver snorted. “Like the
flower
?”

The look she gave him made him wish he’d kept better control of his face, but really:
Petunia
? He’d thought she was going to say something simple, but pretty, like Anna or Emilia. Of course, Queen Maude and King Gregor had long ago set the fashion for flower names by giving all twelve of the princesses awful names like Campanula and Tulip.

He was starting to feel uneasy about how close her connections at court might be. If her father had the ear of the king, no matter how lowly an earl he was, Oliver was in very grave trouble. And that meant that his family and everyone under his care was in trouble as well.

“It’s not much farther,” Oliver grunted.

There was a birdcall, and then another, and Oliver knew that sentries had spotted them. He’d taken only a few more
paces when Karl came striding along the path. The big man gave Petunia only a cursory look before lifting Simon off Oliver’s back. He pushed past Oliver and Petunia to hurry off with the injured boy.

The path twisted, and they were at the walls of the old hall. The gate was to the right, but it seemed like too much effort to Oliver, though he usually set an example by using it. Instead, he took the girl’s elbow and steered her through one of the many large breaks in the wall, over the broken stones that had been purposefully left scattered about, half-covered by grass.

“Where are we?” Petunia asked. “Is this your … oh.”

To their left was the hall, artfully propped up from the inside to preserve its derelict appearance. All around them were cooking fires and women carrying baskets of laundry or bread. The bellows were going in the smithy, and near the hall doors was a group of children reciting their lessons with a smiling teacher.

“What is this place?” Petunia’s voice was hushed.

Oliver didn’t answer. The less she knew, the safer his people would be … or was it naive to assume that they could go on living here, now that she had seen them? Part of him, however, wanted to boast, or make a sarcastic remark, welcoming her to his fine country estate.

He opened his mouth to do so, when his mother came out of the hall and headed toward them with an expression on her face that made Oliver feel all of six years old. He stepped a little behind Petunia and almost dropped his pistol trying to holster it.

His mother was brought up short when she got a good look at the girl. Her face went deadly white, and she swayed a little where she stood.

“Mother?” Oliver let go of Petunia’s arm and hurried toward her.

“Maude?” His mother’s voice was barely a whisper.

“No,” the girl said. Her voice was quiet and her face looked strained. “I’m Petunia. But I understand that I look a great deal like my mother.”

“Your mother’s name is Maude?” Oliver felt like the ground had just dropped out from under his feet.

“Yes,” Petunia said, throwing back her hood. “Queen Maude of Westfalin.”

“Your Highness,” Oliver’s mother said respectfully, giving a small curtsy. “Welcome to our humble home. I am the Dowager Countess Emily Ellsworth-Saxony. I came from Breton with your mother when we were just girls.” She gave Petunia a faint smile, but then her eyes hardened and she turned to Oliver.

“Now please explain what the princess is doing here, Oliver.”

“She’s here to visit our lowly earldom, Mother,” Oliver said, and he knew with great certainty that if his mother didn’t kill him, King Gregor would. His fate was sealed.

He started to laugh.

Kidnapped

Petunia promised herself that she would not panic. She would behave at all times in a manner befitting a princess. No matter how difficult it became.

At least she’d been left alone for a bit. Admittedly, it was in a room that belonged to that young man … who, it seemed, was an earl … who had kidnapped her. While the earl’s mother scolded him for the kidnapping, a smiling woman in a patched but clean gown had taken Petunia into the hall to rest. As though she would curl up on a strange man’s bed!

Instead she paced. The ornate bed filled most of the little room, but it still felt good to move. She had been frightened, when Oliver had first abducted her, that he was going to … er, ruin her, as Maria would say. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she knew it was a terrible thing that was only talked about in whispers. But with his mother here, she thought she was fairly safe. Now she just had to convince them to let her go.

She checked the little watch pinned to her bodice and sighed. She should have arrived at the Volenskaya estate by now. The grand duchess would be concerned, and her grandson, the handsome Prince Grigori … Petunia suppressed a delicious little shiver. Prince Grigori would be beside himself with worry, she was sure. He had probably waited at the gates for her, and when she hadn’t arrived … would he dare search for her in the darkness? He was a fearless huntsman—she was sure that he would.

She decided that she was in no real danger, now that she was under the protection of one of her mother’s oldest friends. Not that she remembered Lady Emily. Maude had brought several ladies-in-waiting with her from Breton, most of whom had returned to Breton when Maude died. Petunia had been just two years old at the time. A few of the ladies had married Westfalian nobles and stayed behind, like this countess, and one had become the princesses’ governess. Trapped in the bandit earl’s bedchamber for the time being, Petunia had ample time to wonder just what had happened to this particular lady-in-waiting.

This hall, of a design that had not been in fashion for a good five hundred years, looked like a strong wind would blow it over from the outside, but within, the masonry was freshly repaired. The stairs to the upper gallery were only a few years old at most. The main doors were hanging askew, but from the inside she had seen that they were actually propped in place with thick beams. There was an entire village’s worth of people outside, going about their business as if this was
just an ordinary day. She supposed that it was, for them. But if Oliver was an earl, why was he robbing coaches as one of the notorious Wolves of the Westfalian Woods? And why were all his people hiding here in this carefully maintained squalor?

The room was a bit stuffy, so Petunia took off her cloak. She carefully smoothed its folds across the foot of the bed. Jonquil had been jealous when she’d seen it, especially after Petunia had embroidered the hood with silver bullion her godfather had given her. But the one perk of being the shortest was that Petunia never had to share her clothes. That was also how she had gotten a whole cloak out of Rose’s old gown. Of course, that was also the drawback of being both the shortest and the youngest: she rarely got anything new. It was much more economical to just cut off the frayed hems of someone else’s gowns.

Still, her height (or lack thereof) made her look more like her mother than any of the other girls did, and Iris griped that it had made her Father’s favorite, which Petunia didn’t mind at all. She was the only one of the sisters allowed to cut flowers from the special hothouses, and she was even working with her father and Reiner Orm, the head gardener, to develop a new strain of rose, which she planned on calling Maude’s Sunrise. The flowers would have a blush pink center but be true yellow at the edges of their petals.

There was knock on the door.

“Enter,” Petunia said, pushing at her hair to make sure all her pins were still in place.

“Hello, my dear,” said the countess. Delicious smells wafted from a covered tray that she was carrying. “Are you hungry?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” Petunia said, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She hoped that the countess wouldn’t hear her stomach growling as her nose caught the aromas of chicken soup and fresh bread.

Petunia pulled over one of the room’s two chairs and began to eat without hesitation. The countess sat in the other chair, hands neatly folded.

“I’m sure you’ve had quite the taxing day,” the older woman said.

Petunia gave her a wry look rather than answering. The soup was excellent, and the little round loaf of bread was so fresh it steamed when she pulled it apart.

“I don’t know why Oliver did what he did—” the countess began.

“Do you mean robbing my coach or abducting me?” Petunia did not bother to keep the tartness out of her voice. “The Wolves of the Westfalian Woods have been harassing travelers for several years now, growing bolder by the season. Surely this is not a fit pastime for an earl?”

“It isn’t some hobby that my son has taken a fancy to,” the countess replied, equally tart. “I’m afraid that we have had little choice.”

“How do you not have a choice?” Petunia put down her spoon. “It’s not like an earl has to steal to make his living. He should have farms to provide income, and …”

But the countess was shaking her head. “Do you know the name of this earldom?”

“Er. No,” Petunia said after a moment’s thought.

“Saxeborg-Rohlstein.”

Petunia frowned. Their governess had insisted that the princesses memorize the names of all of the duchies and earldoms in Westfalin, yet Saxeborg-Rohlstein didn’t sound at all familiar.

“I would be surprised if you knew it,” the countess said, reading Petunia’s baffled expression correctly. “It ceased to exist when you were … five? Six at the oldest.”

“How does an earldom cease to exist?”

“We won the war with Analousia,” the countess said, and now Petunia was even more confused. The countess sounded almost angry about the Westfalian victory.

The twelve-year-long war with Analousia had been one of the bloodiest episodes in Ionian history. Queen Maude had made her second pact with the King Under Stone in order to bring about the end of the war, which the sisters suspected had been engineered by the King Under Stone in order to bring Maude more securely into his power. And though the cost of the war had been awful, with great loss of life and wealth on both sides, Westfalin had prevailed in the end, which should have delighted the dowager countess.

But clearly it did not.

“When the boundary between Westfalin and Analousia was redrawn as part of the treaty,” the dowager countess went
on, “my husband’s earldom was cut in half, and the pieces were given away. Half stayed in Westfalin, the other half is now in Analousia.” She took a piece of the bread, toying with it as she stared into the distance. “The earldom was small and almost entirely forest. And there was no one to remind Gregor that it even existed. My husband was killed in one of the final battles, when Oliver was only seven years old. We didn’t even realize that the boundary had changed until some of our men were arrested for poaching in what had just become the King of Analousia’s forest. I suppose he doesn’t mind us living here in the old hall, as long as we don’t kill any deer.”

Petunia set down the cup of milk, slopping it over her hand. “We’re in
Analousia
?”

“That’s right,” the dowager countess told her. “The highway is now the boundary of the two countries, whereas it used to be solidly in Westfalin. The estate that was my husband’s seat is still in Westfalin but was given to a duke as a reward after the war. I assume that Gregor thought our entire family had been wiped out, and by the time I was able to take Oliver to Bruch to petition for its restoration, it was too late.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Petunia spluttered. “We
won
the war! Why would we give Analousia any of our land? And if you were really a friend of my mother’s, then Father would have listened to you when you went to him for help!”

Petunia’s face was burning hot, and there was a tight feeling in her chest. Her father would never take away someone’s land and just give it to someone else! Preposterous!

“My dear,” Lady Emily said quietly. “By the time Oliver
and I went to court, you and your sisters were caught up in whatever mischief it was that saw your dancing slippers worn through every night.”

Petunia thought her head would burst, it felt so hot, but the dowager countess was moving on.

“We spent weeks trying to get an audience with Gregor, but he could not—or simply
would
not—see us. Then they arrested dear Anne Lewiston, your governess, on charges of witchcraft, and a friend advised me to flee before I, too, was charged. I had once been a confidant of your mother’s, after all, and I was a foreigner. I brought my sons back to the forest to hide. We went to Analousia and tried petitioning King Philippe for help in regaining that part of the estate, but since my sons were Westfalian and I Bretoner, he would not listen to us either.”