And then the distinctive and furious barking of an Italian greyhound.
And then a scream.
He lifted his head, cast her a single, startled glance, and then dropped her ribbons and sprinted toward the stairs. “Stay put,” he ordered.
Honestly, she could not fathom why he thought his barked commands would work upon her. She picked up her skirts and chased after him.
They made it all the way to the front door of Pomeroy House before they ascertained the cause of the commotion. Lamentation, Gerry, Wall, Eugénie, Tamsin, Alice, Signor Neri, and four or five dogs were crowded in clumps in the parlor, which resounded with barking and shouting in at least two recognizable languages. Vanessa cowered in the corner, as far as possible from Zenobia, who was growling furiously from her position in the arms of a small, sodden, exceptionally bedraggled woman. The woman’s black hair hung in wet, sandy clumps all the way down to her waist. Her lips were white and her teeth appeared to be bared and lightly chattering.
She looked irate. And freezing.
“What the devil’s going on?” Archer demanded as he skidded into the room. “What was that screaming?”
“I am so sorry,” Alice said, sounding choked. “That was me. Vanessa got free when Zenobia raced by and—”
The tiny, angry woman drew herself up.
And with a dawning sense of horror, Ruby recognized her.
“What is this?” the woman demanded. “Why is Zenobia loose among these other canines?” She clutched the snarling greyhound closer. “What have you people done to her?”
“What havewedone?” exclaimed Lamentation. “What has she done to us, you might as well ask. I’ve lost two fingertips and aboottrying to feed her cuts of lamb. I’ve—”
“I beg your pardon,” the woman said frostily. “Who are you, to speak of Zenobia so?”
“Oh, I’m nobody. I’m just the footman to a bloody Italian royal dog! Who are y—” Lamentation’s speech cut off abruptly, like a bird colliding with a pane of glass.
Revelation, it appeared, had reached him too.
The woman stood ramrod straight. She looked very much the way she did in all the newspaper engravings, except covered head-to-toe in water and sand. “I am Serafina Fiammetta Paxe Maria,” she said, “of House di Sangro. Princess of Monfalcone.”
“Oh,” Lamentation said weakly. He swallowed. “Welcome home.”
It was at this point that the clamor they had interrupted broke out again. Neri leapt forward, his handkerchief raised as if to brush the sand from the princess’s royal personage. Zenobia growled, and Vanessa, with a tail-down whimper, fled the scene, Alice and the bloodhounds hot on her heels.
And Princess Serafina surveyed them all, pale and bedraggled and icily furious. “Who,” she demanded, “are all of you people in my house?”
* * *
Once, when Ruby was twenty and Cassandra eighteen, the Earl of Hangleton had entertained the prime minister for dinner. He did not usually have guests at home, not since his wife had died. Ruby had been painfully thrilled and anxious at the notion that she might play the role of hostess, and even her father’s stern warning—Don’t embarrass me, Ruby, not tonight—had not cooled her enthusiasm.
At dinner, Cassandra had been the picture of calm, decorous politesse, and Ruby had been too—grimly determined to do everything,everythingright.
And then, as she’d watched, the candelabrum behind Liverpool’s head had somehow lit the drapes on fire.
Liverpool, a stern fair-haired Tory in his middle forties, had not seen the flames. No one had except Ruby, who’d looked desperately from her sister to her father to the liveried footmen and watched a very slowly moving catastrophe happen right in front of her eyes.
That was how she felt as she watched the Princess Serafina take over Pomeroy House.
The princess had waved off Neri’s handkerchief. She had fixed her gaze upon Tamsin’s freckled face instead, flung out a commanding hand, and said: “You will find for me a bath. And a dressing gown.”
Tamsin—daughter of the 6th Viscount Drake and niece to the Countess of Bridestowe—had gone rather pink and smothered at that. But she had done what she was told.
Only once she was bathed and wrapped in Ruby’s own robe did the princess consent to explain why she was here at Pomeroy House several days early, alone and half drowned.
“Assassination,” she said acidly. “A poor attempt at one.”
She sat erect on the high bed in the chamber that Ruby had painstakingly outfitted for her these last weeks, her knees tucked beneath her. The fresh flush on her olive skin and her damp hair made a startling contrast with the aristocratic authority on her face and the perfect set of her shoulders.
