Page 6 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

“It is not your fault there was so much going on at the market today, my lady.” Cecile waved a hand, and Petra was pleased to note that she thankfully appeared a little less pale, her normal color returning to her face.

“It is my fault we came at this time today. I am very sorry, Cecile. If it weren’t for Jillian arriving later today—” Petra sighed and shook her head, yet she couldn’t contain her excitement at the impending arrival of her favorite cousin as Cecile’s gaze fell to her tapping foot.

“There is nothing to apologize for.” Cecile reiterated. “It is good to see you so happy about your cousin. When was the last time you saw her?” When she was away from Polite Society and her father, Petra often conversed with Cecile as a trusted friend. Petra had so few of those, she was grateful for the unique relationship she had developed with Cecile, even as the woman held back so much of her past.

“It was well over five years ago.” Given the scandal surrounding her cousins, Petra did not know if she should reveal all to Cecile, but she already traversed so far beyond a typical relationship with a lady’s maid, she judged it unlikely that Jillian would mind. Besides, Jillian had always been the least formal person she knew.

“Jillian’s mother and my mother were sisters who married aristocrats.” Petra did not mention that they were the only children of a Greek industrialist desperate to gain traction in England. Cecile likely already heard talk of that amongst the other servants. “My mother died many years ago, and Jillian’s mother died in…unclear circumstances just over five years ago.” Again, Petra did not speak of the actual circumstances: that her uncle, Baron Beckforth, had accused Jillian’s older brother Stephen of killing her aunt, Lady Beckforth. “Jillian married right after the scandal and left for the Continent. I have not seen her since.”

“Forgive any impertinence, my lady, but you seem very fond of this cousin.”

Petra’s heart lit at the memories they had shared together, how Jillian had always known how to draw her out of her lonely shell of books and propriety, of all the adventures they had planned together. “Not impertinent at all. I am very fond of her. She is more like a sister than a cousin.”

Cecile regarded her evenly. “Will you tell her where we are going today?”

Petra swallowed as reality pulled her from the warm light of fond memories into the pallid reality of the present. “I would like to. I would. But the fewer people who know, the better. At the same time, I trust Jillian with my life.”

Cecile’s steady gaze did not waver. “When you marry Lord John, will you tell him?”

Petra had nearly forgotten her almost-betrothed in her excitement for where they were going and Jillian’s arrival that day.

“Again, the fewer people who know, the better. However, I do not like to lie. And Lord John seems to be the very best of men, so if anyone could understand, it would be him.” Lord Wolfridge’s strange offer sprang to mind, prompted by the thought of Lord John and her aversion to deceit. What was he about, that devil in disguise? The only exchanges she ever held with him always ended in teasing mockery. And now he wished them to pretend to court?

And yet, despite her discomfort with deception, a perverse curiosity lingered, like an unsolvable puzzle she could not help but attempt. There was something about Lord Wolfridge that simultaneously put her completely at ease and kept her on the balls of her feet. That unsettling yet freeing feeling spoke to the small devil in her that made her long to say yes. The same devil that led her to sneak around Covent Garden and hide the novels Miss Winston had given her at the bottom of her wardrobe.

Color returning to her features, Cecile inhaled deeply and rose, her tall stature looming over Petra, who habitually found a profound sense of sanctuary when in the company of this formidable Viking protector. “I am much recovered, my lady.”

As they headed toward their clandestine destination, Petra recalled with trepidation that no one close to her besides Cecile knew anything about this endeavor. Perhaps she was better at lies and subterfuge than she wished to be.

* * *

Later that afternoon, after Petra and Cecile had returned from their errand, Petra found herself greeting her cousin Jillian, who surprised both her father and Petra by arriving all alone without a companion or maid. Petra observed her father hide his initial dismay after a fraction of a second as he offered Cecile’s services to Jillian.

Still nursing guilt from earlier in the day, Petra made sure to ask Cecile as she helped Jillian unpack her trunk and portmanteau.

“Do you mind, Cecile? I know that due to our…circumstances, it can be a great deal of work.” Petra was still unsure whether to tell Jillian about the errand she engaged in with Cecile that day. Rather quiet and withdrawn, Jillian was not acting like the Jillian she had remembered, and she did not wish to overburden her cousin with her own affairs.

“Never you mind, my lady.” Cecile had finished moving Jillian’s gowns to the wardrobe and both women nodded at her departure.

As Jillian rummaged through her portmanteau, Petra took a moment to study her cousin. Given their Greek mothers, Jillian was quite like Petra in appearance, although as a girl she had been tall and strong while Petra had always been petite. Yet, this Jillian, while still quite tall compared to Petra, appeared gaunt and much more willowy than the beautiful Amazon she had been before. Whilst Petra had always enjoyed a natural rapport with her cousin, she was seized by an inexplicable stiltedness now that Cecile had absented the chamber.

In society, Petra knew she always appeared perfectly measured in conversation, never saying too much or too little, because her father held all her marionette strings and could so easily cut them if she stepped a toe out of line. How sad it was, that Jillian was possibly the only person in the world she actually loved, and Petra could scarcely find the words to begin.

Fortunately, Jillian spared her the burden of any clumsy overture by being the first to fracture the oppressive stillness. “Do you mind if I do not join you for the theatre tonight? I am rather weary from the last few weeks of travel.”

Jillian had come from her family seat, Beckforth Park, after burying her late father, also known by society as the Bad Baron Beckforth, a sobriquet Petra knew he richly deserved. Jillian, who previously lived in Madrid with her late diplomat husband, had needed to travel to Bath to retrieve her father’s body, then make the journey to Beckforth Park to bury him in the family plot. And then she arrived in London. Of course she was tired.

“I do not mind at all. I am only sad you will miss it, but you deserve the rest.” When Petra looked more closely, the lines of Jillian’s face did not appear to come from fatigue but something more like melancholy. What had happened to her dear cousin these last few years? Was her husband a brute? Was it her missing brother Stephen?

“Jillian, I—” How did one uncover that which the other person wanted to remain hidden? Petra could play games, of course, she had a close seat to the ultimately game player of Parliament in her father. But she did not wish to play any game with Jillian. She wanted Jillian to tell her freely what was wrong and she yearned to share her own secrets.

But she did not know how to ask.

“I’m so happy you are here,” she finished. Perhaps that was all she could do. Just be there and do everything in her power to bring back the light in her cousin’s eyes. “Speaking of the theatrical, do you remember when we tried to put on the Odyssey for your mother when you came to town ten years ago?”

“How could I forget?” A lightness briefly returned to Jillian’s face that warmed Petra’s heart. “We did not get past our opening with the Trojan Horse, did we?”

“Well, I suppose neither you nor I were very sufficient carpenters. Or stagehands.” Petra added, glad that stiltedness had dissipated as memories knitted between them.