“What a hideous hotbed of spying and backstabbing that household is. Poor Princess Charlotte. Imagine growing up alone in such an environment.”
“Poor Charlotte, indeed.”
Hero glanced over at him. “Do you believe Caroline’s tale? That Prinny tricked his daughter into agreeing to this vile betrothal?”
“It sounds like him, doesn’t it?”
“It does, rather.” She was silent for a moment. “Just when you think you can’t despise Prinny any more, you learn one more disgusting detail about his treatment of his wife and daughter.”
“When a prince pays people to stand up in court and swear to a vile collection of lies about his own wife, I suspect there is little he wouldn’t do.”
Out on the ice, a bagpipe player began to play a jig, and a laugh went up along the bridge as a man near him began to dance. Hero said, “How deeply involved in this tangled mess do you think Jane Ambrose was?”
Devlin shook his head. “I’m not sure. But her visit to Caroline last week is more than a bit suggestive. First Caroline, then Lord Wallace.”
Hero watched an acrobat turning handstands in the middle of the river. “I wonder what else my friend Miss Kinsworth didn’t tell me.”
“If she’s protecting Charlotte, it could be a great deal.”
Chapter 23
Princess Charlotte’s noble governess, the Dowager Duchess of Leeds, typically attended her charge between the hours of two and five. The exception was on Sundays, when Her Grace put in an appearance between noon and three—which was how she came to be crossing the entrance hall when Hero arrived at Warwick House that afternoon.
“Ah, dear Lady Devlin,” said the Duchess, intercepting her with a tight smile. “What a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, Princess Charlotte is at present indisposed, so that neither she nor Miss Kinsworth will be able to come down. But do say you’ll join Arabella and me for tea?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” said Hero with an equally false smile as she allowed herself to be shepherded into the dilapidated drawing room that lay just off the entrance.
“Have you met my daughter? Lady Arabella Osborne.”
“Lady Devlin.” The slender young girl rising from the room’s threadbare silk settee was so lovely it was hard not to stare. Just sixteen years old, she had flawless alabaster skin, a perfect nose, and a trembling pink rosebud of a mouth that seemed to smile shyly. But when Hero met her eyes, she found them a shrewd, icy gray, as hard and unfeeling as granite.
“I do hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with Charlotte,” said Hero, taking a lumpy high-backed chair by the fire.
Lady Arabella gave a pretty little frown. “What?”
“Her sudden illness.”
“Oh, no, not too serious,” said the Duchess, settling beside her daughter and reaching to pour the tea.
Born plain Miss Catherine Anguish, she had begun life as the daughter of a barrister from the middling gentry. She owed the coup of her splendid marriage to her beauty, which in her youth was said to have rivaled her daughter’s. Now in her forties, she was still an attractive woman, although tiresome, with a tendency to tell long-winded, boring tales about her own health. She’d also allowed her elevation to the rank of duchess to go to her head, acquiring a well-deserved reputation as an insufferable snob who treated anyone she considered her inferior with ostentatious condescension. And she considered anyone not from a ducal or royal family her inferior.
“Truth be told,” said the Duchess, handing Hero a cup, “the child has the constitution of an ox. I, on the other hand, have been most dreadfully plagued all winter by a severe inflammation of the lungs. Why, just yesterday the Regent sent his own dear Dr. Heberden to check on me. ‘Your Grace,’ he said to me, ‘your sufferings would crush the spirit of nearly anyone, yet you bear it all with the fortitude and determination of a saint. A saint!’”
“How . . . admirable,” said Hero, resigning herself to an excruciatingly detailed recital of Her Grace’s shortness of breath, the pinched nerve in her back, the phantom pains her numerous physicians feared might mean gallbladder problems. Finally, after some ten minutes of this, Hero managed to stem the recitation of ills long enough to turn to young Lady Arabella and say, “I understand you’re learning Italian.”
“I am, yes,” said the girl, carefully settling her teacup into its saucer.
The Duchess beamed. “She is quite the linguist, you know. She was already fluent in French, and she recently learned German, as well.”
“German? An unusual choice,” said Hero.
“Mmm. The Princess and Miss Kinsworth are both fluent in it, you see, and had taken to conversing in the language so that no one else could understand what they were saying. Unfortunately, as soon as Arabella mastered German, they switched to Italian.”
“Cheeky of them,” said Hero.
Lady Arabella threw her talkative mother a warning frown that appeared utterly lost on the Duchess. “You’ve no idea,” she continued. “Charlotte is quite the little hoyden. Just last week she locked poor Arabella in the water closet for a quarter of an hour and refused to let her out.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Why? Well . . . you know,” she said vaguely. “The girl does that sort of thing all the time, I’m afraid. She shakes hands with men as if she were a man herself, strides about with all the boisterous energy of a general reviewing his troops, and laughs nearly as loudly as her mother. One would think no one had ever taught her how to behave en princess. But believe me, Lady Devlin, I have tried.”
“I’ve no doubt you have,” murmured Hero. Between the hours of two and five—or twelve and three on Sundays.
“Have I ever! She’s horse mad, of course. Gallops all over the place when she’s out at Windsor. No one can stop her—not even her grandmother the Queen. The
