Page 71 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“Show me.”

With obvious reluctance, Alistair stepped forward to untie his wrists. Mr. Forster came, too, positioning himself next to them and laying a warning hand on the man’s shoulders. “Don’t try anything foolish.”

The man rubbed his wrists and looked affronted at the suggestion. “Ich bin Herr Dieter Schenk,” he said, jerking a thumb toward his chest once the feeling had returned to his hands. “Abgesandte zum . . .”

Constantia turned desperate eyes to Harriet, who wore an uncertain frown. “His name is Mr. Schenk. Beyond that, I’m not sure.”

With a racing heart, she watched as Mr. Schenk reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a folded parchment bearing an elaborate seal and something still hidden in his fist. Then he opened his hand to reveal an earring identical to the one she’d sold so long ago.

“He says . . . that you were lost to them for many years, but the appearance of this, this—oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know! Crown jewel? But that hardly seems right, for how could you have come by any such thing? Anyway, because of . . . whatever it was, he was sent to London to find you, but you . . . you hid. He says he knew you had not gone far, because he could identify you by your drawings, the ones you made for . . .” Harry’s eyes rounded to saucers. “Miss Cooper?”

“Nein!” Mr. Schenk protested. “Nicht Cooper. Bah! Das ist eine Beleidigung.” And he waved the paper vigorously in their faces.

“Settle yourself,” said Mr. Forster, tightening his grip on the man’s shoulder.

Mr. Schenk might easily have thrown off his hand, but instead his broad shoulders sagged, and he sent a desperate look to Harriet, Alistair, and Constantia. “Bitte?”

“What’s he on about now?” asked Lady Posenby, who, despite her determination to stay, was watching the proceedings with an expression that said she’d seen better performances on the London stage.

“I’m not . . . sure,” murmured Constantia, even as she rose and went toward the door, where she had dropped her valise when they had entered. Kneeling beside it, she rummaged in its depths and withdrew the leather case. “But I think it must have something to do with my mother and father.”

She approached Mr. Schenk with the case held out before her, as if it were a cannonball she feared to drop. Opening the clasp, she hooked a finger in a crevice of the frame and withdrew the matching earring. Those standing nearest gasped.

But Mr. Schenk had eyes only for the picture. “Sie sehen wie Ihre Mutter aus.”

Harriet whispered the wholly unnecessary translation: “You look like your mother.”

“It’s true my name is not Cooper,” Constantia explained, looking around the small group of wide-eyed faces as she clutched the portrait to her chest. “My mother was an Englishwoman, and my father—I never knew. An itinerant artist. When I was a young woman, I discovered that I inherited some portion of his skill. The last few months, I have been drawing cartoons for Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses.”

“Miss C.,” breathed Harry, a shade too reverently for Constantia’s taste. Lady Posenby clucked.

“How this man came to concoct such a fabulous tale about my origins, or where he acquired what looks like my mother’s earring, I cannot say—”

“Keine Märchen,” Mr. Schenk insisted, rattling the paper again. “No fable.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Alistair gently, “we ought to read it.”

“Ich lese, ja!” With a grin, Mr. Schenk broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and began to read aloud—in German. Constantia’s head ached from trying to pick out meaning from the unfamiliar sounds. She heard her own name, its syllables delightfully strange on Mr. Schenk’s tongue, and preceded by a word that sounded a great deal like—but no. That could never be.

“Did he—?” Harriet ventured. “Did he say princess? Auf Englisch, bitte?” she pleaded with Mr. Schenk, who grinned again.

“Ja, ja. Moment.” He dragged one stout finger down the page, then jabbed the paper and looked up at Constantia. “Auch auf Englisch. Für Ihre Mutter, natürlich.”

“The document also contains an English translation,” Harriet explained. “For your mother’s benefit.”

“In that case, may I?” Lady Posenby stepped forward and snatched the paper from his hand. “I’d rather not listen to this fellow mangle every other word.” Without any assistance from her lorgnette, and in a voice that grew more incredulous with every sentence, she read out,

A Proclamation of Prince Christoph, of the Royal House of Friedensfeld

Made this seventeenth day of February, seventeen hundred eighty-four.

I, Christoph von Friedensfeld, do hereby make known my marriage, lawful in the eyes of God, to the Lady Marianne Kent and announce the birth of a daughter, heiress of my body, to be known henceforth as the princess Constantia . . .

There was more, but the buzzing in Constantia’s ears would let her hear none of it. If Alistair hadn’t helped her to a chair, she might have fainted. “It isn’t true,” she insisted to him. “It can’t be.”

He slipped the parchment from his aunt’s slackened grasp and inspected the seal, then looked at her with marveling eyes. “I think it might be.”