Archer set his hand to the door, pushing slowly to prevent the escape of a pack of rogue hounds. He scarcely had the door open, however, before he heard a small but decided clamor emanating from some nearby room.
He paused and looked down at Ruby. “Shall we try the back?”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but was that not—”
Lamentation burst around the corner, Gerry and Tamsin at his heels. He spotted Archer and Ruby at the door, and his mouth tightened into a sickly smile. “Cap,” he croaked. “Thank goodness you’re back.”
“Is everything all right?” Archer asked. He was through the door now, and he’d let Ruby’s hand slip from his before anyone saw. It felt far bigger a loss than it ought to have; he wanted to catch her around the shoulders and drag her up against his body. He wanted to tangle his hand back in her wilted ribbons; he did not wish to let her go.
“It’s fine,” Lamentation said, still with that peculiar expression pinned to his mouth. “Everything’s just as it ought to be here at Pomeroy House. Don’t you think so, Estate Steward Captain Archer?”
This speech alarmed Archer extremely. “Ah,” he said, “yes?”
Tamsin pushed ahead of Lamentation. “Pull yourselves together,” she whispered. “They’re here.”
Ruby glanced from Lamentation to her friend and shoved helplessly at the damp, sandy mass of her hair. “Who’s here? What are you talking about?”
Tamsin’s wild-eyed gaze took in Ruby and Archer together, and then the wet trail they’d left behind them on the marble. “Oh God.Nowis when you—” She broke off, flinging her hands in the air. “Never mind. Just... hide. Both of you should hide.Nottogether.”
“I don’t understand what I’m hiding from—”
Ruby’s whispered words cut off abruptly as Alice’s voice floated in from the corridor. Alice sounded inhumanly calm, her voice lilting and polite.
She sounded, Archer realized with a sense of rising horror, as if she were talking to a stranger. In their house.
“Right this way,” Alice’s disembodied voice said sweetly. “Allow me to show you into the blue parlor. We’ve only just finished outfitting it.”
“Tamsin,” Ruby hissed, “who is Alice talking to?”
But before Tamsin could reply, there was a crash from the blue parlor. And then a clamor of raucous barking, followed by a pitchy wobble from Alice, not quite indecorous enough to be called a squeak. “Oh! I had forgotten about the hounds in here. They’re—oh! Oh goodness. If you could perhaps call her back, I would be most grateful. Oh—oh dear...”
Alice’s trailing words were drowned out by the sound of a reedy voice—an accent somewhere between French and Italian, oh hell, ohshit—wailing: “Zenobia! Zenobia,vieni qui!”
And then a small, springy gray dog bounded into the room and launched herself six feet in the air, directly at Gerry’s chest.
Helplessly, Gerry caught her.
The dog—Zenobia, Archer presumed—was an outrageous-looking creature, all spindly legs and narrow face and absurd bat ears. She wore a thin bejeweled collar around her arched neck, and she was digging aggressively in Gerry’s shirtfront with her snout and her paws.
Zenobia was an Italian greyhound, if Archer did not miss his guess.
And Archer was—quite spectacularly—fucked.
Before he could move or speak, a short, spare man barreled around the corner. His velvet frock coat was bottle green and spotless, though his wig and spectacles were possessed of a slightly drunken tilt.
He was, indubitably, Signor Urbano Neri. The majordomo to the princess of Monfalcone.
“Zenobia,” he moaned, “scendi!”
Zenobia did not come down. Instead, she nestled more snugly into Gerry’s arms and sent the signore a look that could most accurately be described as smug.
Archer’s limited Italian could not quite follow the series of salty imprecations that followed, but they seemed to be directed toward the dog’s character, lineage, and obstreperous conduct on the sea journey from Monfalcone to Cornwall.
Gerry looked pitifully from Archer to the signore as Zenobia began to lick his chest.
Archer swallowed very hard. And then he put on his most blinding smile—perhaps it would distract from the sand liberally coating his entire body—and strode forward. “Signor Neri—” His voice cracked, and he had to swallow again. Dear God, he wanted to cover his eyes and sprint in the opposite direction. “What a pleasure to welcome you to Pomeroy House. And the... princess?”
It came out a question. Archer looked to the threshold through which Alice had emerged—sans Monfalcone princess—and tried to project an air of confidence, rather than the sense of doom he actually felt.
