Chapter Two
Petra adjusted the heavy veil of her bonnet, ensuring it draped to obscure her features from any inquisitive glance.
While the act of walking in the company of her maid would scarcely invite the scrutiny of Polite Society, she was acutely aware that her choice of neighborhood would be noted with immediate interest should she be recognized.
“Are you quite well, Cecile?” Her lady’s maid was almost a foot taller than her and appeared to have greater difficulty moving against the crowd. A lifetime of governesses and avoiding her father’s traps when she could had led Petra toward a lightness of foot.
I would be a good spy, a self-satisfied voice within her crowed, and Petra almost rolled her eyes as the silly thought entered her mind.
She pushed such fancies away as she took in Cecile’s countenance.
The tall woman was almost out of breath, and from the way her eyes darted to all sides, Petra realized it was not due to any exertion but rather the circumstance.
“I am so sorry, Cecile, I did not think of how being jostled amongst so many may have caused you distress. Here, let us take some time to recover.” Petra led the taller woman off toward what appeared to be the alley of a lesser-known theatre, as Petra noted old sets of a royal court sitting outside in the alleyway, the vestiges of a previous production of perhaps a Shakespearean history.
How bird-brained could she be? Petra had found Cecile over a year earlier, scarred and nearly starving on the street.
While she could not coax much out of Cecile initially, over time, Petra discerned that Cecile had come from some kind of circumstance where she had been forced to fight others for her survival.
She never said where she was from, but her accent gave away some kind of Nordic background, as did her Viking-like height and blond hair.
While at first Petra’s father, Lord Kemberley, had objected to the woman training to be Petra’s lady’s maid, that was one of the few battles that Petra had won, given the unique agreement about hiring staff she held with her father.
Surveying the broken throne that sat in the alleyway, Petra led Cecile to sit as she examined her reticule for anything that could aid Cecile.
“Smelling salts? Megrim powder?” Petra offered as she realized how useless almost everything she had on her person was.
Cecile gave her a look that said that she would not be caught dead using smelling salts.
With an unladylike shrug she would never dream of showing her father, Petra joined her on the stage throne next to her and sighed. “I fear I did not think that through.”
“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 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.
“Stephen ought to have been better. He was very good with his hands,” Jillian noted as a flash of something like wistfulness crossed her face.
“Have you—have you heard from him?” Jillian’s brother had disappeared from England after Lord Beckforth declared him the murderer of Lady Beckforth.
Yet Petra could not believe such a thing.
Stephen had been the closest thing she had to a brother, always patient and kind with her.
Protective in a way that she had wished for from—
“Pet!” Her father’s voice cut through their conversation and Petra had to force herself not to grimace at the diminutive. “We will be late for the theatre if you two continue squawking like peahens.”
Petra gave Jillian an apologetic smile as Jillian frowned at her uncle’s intrusion.
Petra wondered if Jillian noticed her grimace or the way Petra’s skin crawled at that awful nickname.
Tonight she would be safe, she reminded herself.
They would be in a public space. While her father had an exclusive box at the theatre, surely it was public enough that he would not risk his usual schemes.
Petra prayed that her discomfort was not palpable as she rose and kissed her cousin on the cheek.
Mayhap Jillian’s presence would safeguard her, however briefly, from being a pawn in her father’s larger chess matches.
One could only hope.