Gerry made a deep wordless sound in his chest. His eyes said more of devotion and restraint than any speech Ruby had ever heard. “We know you’d bring us back out,” he said. “You never let us go, Cap. That’s what matters.”
Ruby pressed her palm to Archer’s knee, and he covered her hand with his own. She suspected he was on the verge of weeping. She wanted, if she could, to give him something to hold fast to.
There was, after that, a long stretch of quiet. And when they arrived at the Aurelian Society’s Surrey estate, the first to make a sound was Zenobia.
The greyhound put her front paws to the barouche’s window, barking furiously. As the vehicle rolled to a halt, Zenobia threw herself at the door, a wriggling dynamo that snarled and growled until the door came open and she sprang free.
When she was on the ground, she ran. Her small body made a gray blur against the leaf-littered ground.
The rest of them ran after her. They chased Zenobia past the main building, the conservatory, the orchid-strewn glasshouse where the butterflies were kept. They followed her down a slope and through a pasture and, finally, into a tumbledown dairy barn.
Zenobia’s frantic barking had drawn out a petite black-haired woman. At the sight of Zenobia, the woman’s lips parted. She stepped forward and opened her arms to the little dog.
Zenobia launched herself into the air.
Serafina Fiammetta Paxe Maria, Princess of Monfalcone, caught the dog to her chest. She went down on her knees.
And for the first time since she’d stepped foot on English shores, the princess buried her face in Zenobia’s mud-covered flank and wept.
Within moments, they had all converged upon the dairy barn. Signor Neri, who appeared to have lost the power of speech, arrived first. He dabbed at the princess’s face with his handkerchief and stroked Zenobia’s enormous ears with outright abandon. His wig had fallen down over his left ear.
“Tam,” Ruby said breathlessly. “Where’s Tamsin?”
“Inside.” The princess gestured to the stone dairy. “She’s there—she’s well—”
And indeed, when Ruby and Alice hurled themselves across the threshold, Tamsin was upright and waiting for them. Her face was pale, her copper hair streaked with dirt. She leaned heavily against the low stone wall, balanced precariously on one leg.
“Oh thank Christ,” she said when she saw Ruby and Alice. “One more day alone with the princess, and I’d have assassinated her myself.”
The princess, who’d turned to watch the reunion, only looked smug. She held Zenobia against her chest. “I told you. Did I not predict this? Zenobia is a little heroine.”
“Zenobia,” Tamsin said, “is a hellhound.”
What followed was a not inconsiderable clamor, particularly when the head of the Aurelian Society noticed Cassandra’s carriage and came down to the dairy barn to investigate.
It took a very long time to die down.
Upon interrogation, Tamsin revealed that she and the princess had been hidden in the dairy barn for roughly forty-eight hours. After an abortive escape from Verdura’s thugs halfway between Southampton and London, they had reunited with Zenobia on the road and then made their slow and painful way to a nearby farm. A day later, they’d escaped via hay wain and begun a meandering trek toward London. They had stopped at the dairy barn for a night’s rest when Zenobia had suddenly vanished without a trace.
“Her Highness insisted on remaining,” Tamsin explained through white lips. The head of the Aurelian Society, a natural philosopher by training, was applying a splint to her ankle, and Tamsin’s face had taken on a greenish cast.
“For Zenobia,” the princess explained. “I paused merely to await her return.Notbecause you travel so poorly and require so very much assistance.”
“I have,” Tamsin growled, “abroken leg.”
The head of the Aurelian Society patted her freckled knee. “Ankle, my duck. But it’s healing very well.”
Signor Neri stepped forward. He had restored his wig, though he still looked rather overset. “Captain Archer,” he said formally, “the royal family thanks you for your service. House di Sangro will not forget the aid you have rendered its eldest daughter.”
Archer blinked. He looked at Neri, and then at Ruby and Alice and Tamsin and Lamentation. “To be honest,” he said, “I’m not certain I did anything.”
From her place atop the dairy’s low stone wall, which she’d perched upon as though it were a throne, Princess Serafina gestured for Neri to attend her. They bent their heads together, whispering in hasty Italian, for several minutes. Ruby could make out only a handful of words—Verduraandaliveandescape.
No one, as far as she had been able to work out, had any idea where Verdura had fled to. He was still alive. Still, Ruby feared, a threat to the princess.
His attempts on my life grow increasingly bold, Serafina had told them.This was not his first attack.
And perhaps not the last either.
