Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
Ball Gowns and Pigeon Feathers
Icrossed Grosvenor Square alone, having declined Steele’s offer to escort me home.
Forty yards of pavement in broad daylight did not require a ducal escort, and in any case, I needed to think.
The morning’s revelations—Verstraeten, the regimental connection, the two competing theories of who had killed Hale and Davenport—turned in my mind like the workings of a clock whose face I could not yet read.
I was still turning the pieces when the door to Rosehaven House opened, and I walked into pandemonium.
Snowball shot through the entrance hall at a velocity that defied her size, a ribbon of what appeared to be pink embroidery silk streaming behind her.
Fox was in pursuit, his shirttails untucked, his Latin primer abandoned on the hall table.
Behind him came Holly and Ivy, who were either helping or hindering.
With the twins, it was never entirely clear.
“She got into Chrissie’s sewing basket again!” Fox shouted as he skidded past me on the marble floor.
Snowball vanished beneath the hall table.
Fox dove after her. The twins stationed themselves at either end, executing a pincer movement that suggested considerable tactical planning.
Honeycutt, who had materialized at the bottom of the stairs, observed the proceedings with the expression of a man who had long since accepted that dignity was a luxury this household could not afford.
“Good afternoon, my lady.” Before he could say more, a triumphant shriek from beneath the table announced that Fox had secured the cat. Snowball emerged in his arms, trailing pink silk and looking deeply unrepentant. The twins applauded.
“Take her upstairs, please,” I said. “And return Chrissie’s embroidery silk before she discovers it’s missing.”
“Too late,” Fox said cheerfully, and vanished up the stairs with the criminal in his arms.
I removed my hat and gloves, handed them to Honeycutt, and drew a breath.
The investigation could wait. For the next hour, I would be what I was before I became the Queen’s unofficial spy in London’s drawing rooms: the eldest sister, the one who held things together when they threatened to fly apart.
I did not make it as far as the morning room.
“Rosie!” Chrissie appeared at the top of the stairs, her strawberry-blonde curls in disarray, wearing a dressing gown at half past noon, which was either a sign of crisis or indolence. Her expression confirmed the former. “Thank heavens you’re home. I need you. Urgently.”
“What has happened?”
“The Beaumont ball is in two days’ time, and I have nothing to wear.”
I closed my eyes. Two men were dead. An arms trafficking ring stretched from Liège to Zanzibar. A Belgian weapons broker was either a killer or the next victim. And my sister had nothing to wear.
“Chrissie, you have an entire wardrobe—”
“Nothing suitable. Nothing that will achieve the desired effect.” She descended the stairs with the grim determination of a general preparing for battle. “He will be there, Rosie. Lord Redmayne. And I intend to ensure that when I walk into that ballroom, he realizes exactly what he dismissed.”
Ah. So this was not about a dress. This was about war.
“You wish to look devastating.”
She hitched up her chin. “So devastating that the man cannot form a coherent sentence. I wish him to stand there with that insufferable chiseled jaw of his hanging open and know—” she paused for emphasis, “—that I do not give a fig about him or his opinion.”
The logic of this—dressing with extraordinary care for a man about whom one professed complete indifference—was a contradiction I chose not to examine aloud. Chrissie was eighteen. She would arrive at the irony in her own time.
“Very well,” I said. “Show me what you have.”
What followed was a campaign of considerable scope.
Chrissie’s bedchamber looked as though a modiste’s shop had been struck by a gale.
Gowns lay across every surface—draped over the bed, the chair, the dressing table, and one ambitious creation of ivory satin that had somehow ended up on the mantelpiece.
Tilly and Chrissie’s maid, Ellen, stood amid the wreckage with the resigned expressions of women who had been at this for some time.
I considered the options with the same methodical attention I brought to the investigation.
What color best suited Chrissie’s complexion?
What cut would be striking without being improper?
What would make a serious young man—with a strong jaw and an unfortunate tendency to speak before thinking—lose the power of speech entirely?
“The midnight blue,” I said.
Chrissie held up the gown. Deep blue silk, cut simply, with a neckline that was elegant without being daring. It would set off her hair beautifully. More importantly, it was not pink, not pale, not girlish. It was the gown of a woman, not a debutante.
“With the pearl earrings Cosmos gave you for your birthday,” I added. “And your hair up. Not the ringlets—the chignon. The one that shows your neck.”
Chrissie studied her reflection, holding the gown against her body. Something shifted in her expression—the fury giving way, for just a moment, to something more vulnerable.
“Do you really think it will work?” For an instant, she was not the belle of the season but my little sister, wanting reassurance.
“I think Lord Redmayne is going to wish he had chosen his words more carefully.”
She smiled—a real one, without the armor. “Thank you, Rosie.”
We were interrupted by a knock—or rather, the absence of one. The door swung open, and Petunia marched in with the purposeful stride of a woman of affairs, which she was, in her own estimation.
“I need to go shopping.”
She was eight years old, dressed in her blue frock with her copper braids slightly askew, and she carried a sheet of paper on which she had written what appeared to be a list. Snowball, freshly liberated from Fox’s custody, trotted at her heels with the serene confidence of a cat who had learned that wherever Petunia went, interesting things happened.
“Shopping for what, darling?”
“For Snowball. She needs a proper outfit.” Petunia consulted her list with the gravity of a woman consulting a ledger. “A feathered hat. Pigeon feathers specifically—they’re the right color for white fur. A pink tulle skirt, because pink and white look very well together. And a bell.”
Chrissie, momentarily distracted from her own sartorial crisis, stared at our youngest sister. “A bell?”
“For her collar. So we can find her when she goes missing.” Petunia looked up from her list, perfectly matter-of-fact. “She disappears at least twice a day. I’ve been keeping count. Yesterday it was three times. The bell is a practical solution.”
She’d been keeping count. Of course, she had.
Petunia noticed things, catalogued them, and drew conclusions with a precision that would have done credit to a Scotland Yard inspector.
She had once informed me, with complete seriousness, that Honeycutt always straightened the hall mirror at precisely half past two, that Cook ordered extra butter on Thursdays, and that the postman lingered fourteen seconds longer at our door than at Lady Swithton’s across the square.
“Where exactly does one purchase a feathered hat for a cat?” Chrissie asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Petunia said. “That’s why I need to go shopping. To find out. I expect it will take some time.” She folded her list with crisp efficiency. “May I have an advance on my allowance?”
“We will discuss the hat, the skirt, and the bell,” I said. “But not today. I have rather a lot on my mind.”
Petunia regarded me with the penetrating gaze she had been perfecting since the age of five. “You look tired, Rosie. You always look tired when you’ve been at Steele House.”
Chrissie’s head swiveled toward me with the speed of a woman who has just scented gossip. I ignored her.
“I am not tired. I am busy. There is a difference.”
“Steele looks tired too,” Petunia continued, undeterred. “I saw him in the square last week, and his eyes were all dark underneath. I think he needs more sleep. You should tell him.”
“Thank you, Petunia. I will take that under advisement.”
“What does that mean?” Petunia asked.
“It means she’s not going to tell him,” Chrissie said helpfully.
Petunia frowned, clearly dissatisfied with this outcome. She scooped up Snowball—who submitted with the boneless tolerance of a cat who had accepted her lot—and departed with the air of a person whose excellent counsel had been unjustly disregarded.
I was still smiling when Honeycutt appeared in the doorway. His expression extinguished the smile at once.
“A message, my lady.” He held the salver forward. The envelope was heavy cream, the seal unmistakable.
I took it. Broke the seal. Read the words once, then again, as though repetition might alter them.
Her Majesty requests that Lady Rosalynd Rosehaven attend upon her at Windsor Castle tomorrow. A carriage will be sent at noon.
No explanation. No mention of Steele. Just my name, the Queen’s command, and a carriage that would arrive whether I wished it to or not.
“Rosie?” Chrissie was watching me. “You’ve gone white. What is it?”
“Nothing of consequence.” I folded the letter and slipped it into my pocket—the same gesture, the same words I had used the first time a royal summons had arrived at this house.
The lie had not improved with repetition.
“If you will excuse me, I’ve developed a rather violent headache. I need to lie down.”
“Get your rest. I hope you’ll soon feel better.”
I paused at the doorway and glanced back at Chrissie. “The ivory gloves should work as well.”
“Thank you, Rosie.”
I made it to my bedchamber before the weight of the day settled fully onto my shoulders. I closed the door, leaned against it, and pressed the Queen’s letter to my chest.
Tomorrow. Windsor. Alone.
Steele had been holding something back when we crossed the square—something the Queen had said about me, about us, that he had deflected with the ease of a man who had spent a lifetime managing monarchs and inconvenient truths.
Whatever it was, Victoria had clearly decided that his answers were insufficient.
And so she was sending for the woman who could not deflect. Who lacked Steele’s power of evasion and whose cursed honesty was, in the presence of a queen, less a virtue than a liability.
I changed out of my gown, drew the curtains, and lay on my bed in the darkened room. The headache, at least, had the courtesy to be genuine. It pressed behind my eyes like a tide coming in, keeping time with the questions I could not yet answer.
I closed my eyes and listened to the distant sounds of my household—Chrissie’s voice in the corridor, the twins’ laughter, Petunia explaining something to Snowball in the earnest tones of a woman instructing a subordinate.
My family. My anchor. The world that existed before dukes and murders and Belgian arms brokers and would continue to exist long after.
And as sleep finally, mercifully, arrived, my last thought was not of Victoria or the investigation or even Steele.
It was of Petunia’s face, earnest and certain, consulting her list. Pigeon feathers. Pink tulle. A bell.
Some problems, at least, had solutions.