Chapter 26
“The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.”
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Lark Fitzroy had married Prince Nicholas of Russia? Selina would have been less shocked had someone announced they had seen the Archbishop waltzing at Almack’s.
“Well,” Selina said flatly. “That is the most astonishing nonsense I have ever been asked to credit.”
“It is the truth. I bear his token.” Lark’s hand went to the chain at her throat.
From beneath the folds of her neckline, she drew out a small golden locket, its polish so bright it was clearly newly made.
She flicked it open, revealing the twin portraits inside—Nicholas on one side, her own face opposite.
The paint was still so fresh it seemed to gleam.
Her chin lifted. “He carries the mate to this. Commissioned as soon as we arrived in London, and gifted to me on our wedding day.”
Selina’s tongue failed her utterly. She prided herself on keeping abreast of every major activity in London. Or—if not aware, at least having predicted the possibility.
But in all of her speculations with the others, not a single one of them had once considered that Nicholas’s English love was Lark. There had been no rumours of a wedding, no word of sitting for portraits. Nothing.
Likely, just as Marian Fitzroy had intended.
Marrying Lark to Prince William of Orange had made a certain sense.
It would have put Lark on the Dutch throne, and Lady Fitzroy one step behind.
But Nicholas… was not the Tsar. Not even the heir.
There was another brother, Constantine, between them.
And that was only the beginning of the issues with this marriage that made no sense.
But… then, the pieces of the conspiracy slotted together in a way that the Marchioness of Normanby did not like. Not one bit.
She pushed past Lark, hurrying to the bed. “Perry. Perry!” Selina said urgently, laying her hands on his shoulders. “Please. I need you to pay attention, if only for just a moment.”
For a long moment there was nothing. Then, Perry roused himself slowly, his movements stilted from the long hours of sitting so uncomfortably by the bed. He lifted his gaze to Selina, unshaven, rumpled. Eyes empty, dark circles of fatigue beneath.
“What is it?” he asked flatly, his voice rusty.
“I know what your mother is doing with your sister. With Lady Lark,” she said again to him, trying to get him to attend. “Finally… I have enough to figure out what her true plan is.”
Except—there were still parts that made no sense. To figure out the rest, she needed him. His knowledge of his mother’s thoughts. And to get his help to manage his sister, who might grow reluctant to aid them if she believed there would be trouble.
There would be trouble, if she had even a fraction of this right.
Peregrine stared through her. “Why? It does not matter what my mother does anymore.”
“Do not say such things. Of course it matters,” she said fiercely. “If you give up now, you hand her the victory. We are days away from something dire. We finally may have enough information to stop her, and I need you to pay attention to this, Perry. Other people’s lives are at risk.”
“Other people’s lives are at risk because of me.” His voice was hollow. “Because I keep fighting her. Perhaps I should stop before more people are hurt.”
She needed to get him out of this room. Away from where he could be reminded of Charity. Where, perhaps, she could slap some sense into him without feeling too badly about it.
“You do not mean that. Your mother will hurt people regardless of whether you fight her. Please. Come out to the sitting room for a bit so we don’t disturb Charity,” Selina ordered him.
“No,” he grunted. “I should not leave her alone.”
“She will not be alone. Please, Perry. I will get the maid to sit beside her. I promise.”
He shook his head stubbornly, making to lay his head down on the bed again, but Selina grabbed him around his upper arm, pulling him upright.
“Does it matter more what your mother does,” she said, forcing a note of cruelty into her voice, “if I tell you that your sister may very well be in danger from your mother’s scheme? ”
That made him hesitate, and he looked up again blearily.
“All your friends are in danger,” Lark added her voice to Selina’s. “She did this to Charity. Surely you do not expect her to leave Lady Normanby, Lord Ravenscroft, and Sir Nathaniel alone. They need you to come back to them.”
It was her voice that broke through the fog in his mind. He blinked a few times to clear his vision and then set his red-rimmed eyes on his sister’s face.
“Lark?” he asked, as though he disbelieved his sore eyes. “I—” He turned back to stare at Charity’s far too still form, and then again looked at his sister. “I have failed people so many times,” he said brokenly. “You should not put such faith in me.”
“Then we are a merry band of failures together. We have our guilt for what we have not stopped on our own,” Selina said tartly, holding a hand out to Perry. “But I refuse to let your mother go unchallenged. Will you? I think that together, with what we know now, we can yet thwart her.”
His face fell into lines of worry, and he looked down at Charity again. That he considered the request at all was progress, but taking him any great distance from Charity was going to be an impossibility.
Selina added, “Only to the sitting room, Perry. We can leave the door open.”
Lark seemed to intuit that only touch had any real power to reason with him. She bent over and clasped his hand in hers, drawing him up from his seat. Stiffly, he rose from the wooden chair into which he had consigned himself. His grimace betrayed the ache in his bones.
As he stood upright, Selina rushed from the room to call for Charity’s maid, and then for the two men downstairs.
When she got back, she stopped still, finding Perry and Lark locked in an embrace, each one clinging to the other as they finally reconciled their quarrel in this shared moment of grief.
Peregrine moved like a man half-asleep. But at least he was moving. Lark pulled him towards the sitting room in careful steps, her arm wrapped around his waist, and Selina took his other arm.
Suddenly, the sitting room was full to brimming.
Lord Ravenscroft and Sir Nathaniel were there, helping to rearrange the disordered pieces of furniture into a conversational setting.
Nathaniel helped Lark settle Perry in the middle of a sofa.
Quinn was only minutes behind, bearing tea and sandwiches.
Lark sat to one side of Perry, and Selina looked over the group, settling herself in one of the armchairs, between Lark and Ravenscroft. Commandeering the teapot, she gave herself time to order her thoughts, pouring cups for everyone.
“Make him eat,” she told Lark in a low tone when Peregrine pushed away the offers of food. And while Lark coaxed him into finally eating two bites of sandwich, Selina looked at Ravenscroft and Thorne. “Lady Lark is married to Prince Nicholas.”
Perry was listening well enough that he choked on a bite of sandwich, and Thorne, sitting on his other side, rushed to pat him on the back.
“What? When? How?” Peregrine finally sputtered, disbelief and outrage bringing more colour to his cheeks than the food. He was staring at Selina, but she turned her gaze to Lady Lark, encouraging her to answer the question.
“Six days ago, Prince Nicholas and I wed in a private ceremony at the von Lievens’ residence,” Lark told him.
Understanding lit through Selina. One of the pieces that hadn’t made sense finally did. “The Russian Orthodox Church in London. It is in their home.”
Ravenscroft, one hand over his gaping mouth, let out a slightly hysterical titter. “Well, we certainly didn’t predict this. To think, we believed Nicholas was courting the princess!”
Betrayal glinted dangerously on Peregrine’s face, but his pallor worsened.
“I trusted the Lievens. You mean to tell me they permitted such a thing to happen under the Tsar’s nose?
After they told me it was their duty to maintain the relationship between our two countries? That is a violation of their laws!”
“Perry, they didn’t know,” Lark murmured. ”They weren’t there. Just Mama, the Russian priest, and the witnesses—”
“Selina was right,” he said, horrified. “You are in danger. What you and Nicholas have done violates the laws of succession. Alexander might consider all these actions treason. You will be accused of seducing the prince. You could be arrested.”
This time, Lark was the one to pale to the shade of parchment. “Treason?” she breathed, her voice almost a squeak. “But… I didn’t know.”
“Why the rushed ceremony? And why keep this a secret?” he asked. “Has he—are you—” Peregrine wavered slightly in his seat, and Sir Nathaniel steadied him.
She covered her face, her cheeks scalding to be discussing this in front of people who were practically strangers to her. “I am not expecting,” she mumbled.
“Did our mother force him to marry you somehow?” Perry asked, clearly hopeful that it was only a manipulation of Marian’s. “Who knows what nonsense she might have filled his head with—”
“No!” Lark said, twisting to face him. “He truly loves me. He told me it all the time when we were together… and he told me he’d find a way for us to marry…
but he didn’t want to wait. We exchanged our first vows to one another in Russia, to be married in the sight of Heaven.
And then we married in the church here.”
Peregrine sputtered. “And how did you come to be married as an Anglican in a Russian church, anyway?”
Lark stared down at her hands in her lap. “Mama had me convert.”
“This was why Marian targeted only Edmunds. Your sister was already married; she had only to wait long enough to reveal it.” Selina rubbed her thumb against her lip idly.