Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The remaining day was so busy with work, Pippa had not had time to think about what she had seen. Or maybe it was that she chose not to think of it, for her mind simply refused to take it in.
Only long past midnight, when she finally returned to her chamber, so exhausted that her limbs were shaking, did she dare to address what she had seen that day.
Klemens.
It had, undoubtedly, been Klemens.
His figure, his face, his hair, and his voice.
What hadn’t been Klemens at all had been his demeanour.
He had been, oh, so different! So cold, so arrogant, so proud.
Just like an archduke ought to be.
And he was to marry a Russian princess. How was this possible? It had to be a mistake.
Yes, that must be it.
For how could Klemens ever promise her marriage when he was already promised elsewhere? It was not something he would do. Ever.
Pippa’s heart was racing again, but this time painfully. Her heart squeezed tighter and tighter, and she could not breathe, could not breathe, could not breathe.
She pressed her eyes shut and everything tilted.
She would faint.
No. She would not faint.
Pippa never fainted.
Her entire body was failing her. What she had seen, the implication of the truth that had just hit her with full impact, was so preposterous, so outrageous, so immensely painful, that, surely, there was nothing left but for her body to cease and die.
She felt a small hand in her hair, and a voice that whispered, urgently, “Anna. Anna.”
Someone lifted her shoulders and sat her up. “Breathe. Breathe slowly.” She felt a hand on her forehead, and the pungent, sharp smell of hartshorn salt stinging her nostrils.
“Good. Yes. Again.”
She breathed in again, deeply, and then, oddly enough, the ringing in her ears subsided, and the feeling in her chest lightened, and maybe she would not die after all.
Just yet.
But then the tears came. Hot and wild, they poured out of her eyes, quite against her will.
And she grabbed the shoulder of the girl who had held the hartshorn salt to her nose and wept her heart out.
“It’s quite all right. Cry. Cry as much as you want. We’re the only ones in the room. The others have night duties since they were out all day. I suppose that’s the advantage of having had to stay in during the parade.” Henni patted her hair.
Pippa cried even more, until she felt quite dry, and exhausted, and her body was racking with dry sobs.
“You must love him very much,” Henni said quietly, when she was done.
That nearly set Pippa off in another burst of weeping, except this time she held herself back and took the linen handkerchief Henni handed her.
“I never cry. I was even proud of it. But ever since I arrived in Vienna that is all I seem to do.” She dabbed her cheeks with the handkerchief and crumpled it to a ball.
“Weeping is good. Especially when you have heartache; the kind one has when one has lost a loved one.” Henni put the stopper on the vial of hartshorn salt and set it on the nightstand.
“He really is Klemens.” Pippa’s voice cracked. Saying it aloud was so much worse than thinking it. She heaved another dry sob. “Prince Lucifer.”
Henni looked at her in disbelief. “The man you are to marry? How can this be?”
“I don’t know, Henni.” Pippa leaned back against the pillow, her eyes feeling puffy and swollen, and her voice hoarse from crying. “But I would recognise Klemens anywhere. It is him. And what’s worse, he-he-he didn’t recognise me.” Her voice wavered.
“Of course he wouldn’t.” Henni got up, picked up the pillow, shook it and placed it back on the bed.
“You wore a bonnet, had a dust streak over your entire face and you were dressed in the rough garments of a maid. Not even your own mother who had birthed you would recognise you in that outfit. We are servants. Invisible to them, our masters. And when we come across them, they don’t acknowledge us because they don’t see us.
When they do, they perceive us as furniture, not as real human beings. ”
Pippa twisted the handkerchief between her hands as she uttered the unthinkable.
“He is the son of the emperor. An archduke.” Then she laughed a teary laugh, because it was so ludicrous.
“I still can’t believe it. There must be some sort of mistake.
Maybe he was merely dressing up, pretending to be an archduke.
” Maybe it was all a great lark. Maybe he knew she would be watching from afar so he decided to dress up as an archduke to impress her.
Henni looked at her with pity as she settled down next to her on the bed. “I’ve worked here for seven years, so I can say with certainty that it was Archduke Leopold who we saw.”
“Maybe it is a double. Surely it can happen that two people look the same even though they aren’t biologically related.
It must happen frequently, in fact. So maybe this doesn’t mean anything at all.
” Yes. That must be it. Undoubtedly so. That would make so much more sense than the idea that he really might be the youngest son of the Emperor.
The mere thought filled her with dread, panic and fear.
She rubbed her cold, clammy hands on her bed linen.
“And what if…what if your Klemens really is the archduke?” A look of excitement entered Henni’s eyes. “How terribly exciting and romantic that would be!”
“The only thing I agree with is that it would be terrible, indeed.”
“You met him in disguise, yes? You said he was a student. Naturally he wouldn’t declare that he was an archduke.”
“Yes, but... Yes…but…he should have told me anyhow.”
Had Papa known? How many people had known? And why had he never told her? Was he ever going to tell her?
And what was worse: was that the reason he had stopped writing?
Because, of course, he was an archduke.
And not just any archduke.
“Prince Lucifer,” Pippa whispered. The hard clump of stone in her stomach turned to ice. All the rumours. The letter that she had found, still crumpled in the pocket of her apron, addressed to his ‘Mimi.’ He evidently had a mistress. According to the rumours not one, but many.
“Ah.” Henni cleared her throat. “It might just be rumours, you know.”
“You yourself said earlier today that it wasn’t.”
“I might have been mistaken. Aw. Don’t look at me with such sad eyes. It makes me want to cry, too.”
“From what you know of Prince Lucifer, would he ever make a promise of marriage to a commoner? A country nobody. A girl with no real connections.”
Henni’s eyes shifted aside.
Pippa nodded. “See. That is all the answer I need. There.” She handed the handkerchief back to her.
“What will you do now?”
Pippa stared at the whitewashed wall across from her bed. “I don’t know,” she whispered after a while. “I really don’t know.”
She had lost Papa.
She had lost Sepp and Lotta.
She had lost her home.
And now, it appeared, she had lost Klemens as well.
Except, she’d never had him, had she? The Klemens she’d thought she’d known had never really existed. It was like mourning someone who’d died, but they’d never even lived.
“I don’t think I want to stay here,” she found herself saying. “I don’t like this city. I don’t like the palace. And I certainly don’t like this job.”
“But what will you do instead? Where will you go?”
She had no place to go.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I am so confused.”
“I know what you should do.” Henni straightened the blanket as she spoke.
“Not jump to any conclusions and not act rashly. Just think it through logically. You are normally so good at it, yes? You just have to be very practical. There are several possibilities. One, the most likely, is that it is all coincidence, and the Archduke has an uncanny resemblance to your Klemens. Two, your Klemens has dressed up as the Archduke and joined the imperial parade. In which case you have to discover why he would do such a harebrained thing.” She sat up suddenly as a new thought occurred to her. “Maybe he is a spy?”
That elicited an involuntary giggle from Pippa.
“Or three, he really is the Archduke. Which of the three is it likely to be?”
Henni was right. She had neglected to use her ability which she was normally so proud of: logic and deductive reasoning.
Pippa nodded slowly. “I can follow your reasoning. According to Aristotle, one sets a premise that one tests. One has to analyse all three premises before one can draw a conclusion. The conclusion being that I need to investigate this further.”
Henni clapped her hands together. “Exactly! You cannot come to any reasonable conclusion unless you have actually talked to the man.” She bounced eagerly on her bed. “Talk to Prince Lucifer personally!”
Pippa looked at Henni miserably. “You do not know how terrifying that prospect is.”
They rose early next morning, washed their faces in ice-cold water, and ate a quick breakfast consisting of weak coffee and hard, black bread.
Then, after they were done, Henni said, “They will still be asleep so you must be as quick and as quiet as a church mouse.” “His personal servant will leave the pot in the antechamber. Slip in quietly. Normally I merely retrieve the pot and leave again. But you must take the tapestry door that leads to his bedroom. There is a moment when his valet leaves his bedroom to fetch his clothes from the wardrobe. It usually takes him a while because he has to brush the coat and shine the boots, before he returns. This is when you enter the bedroom.”
Pippa groaned. “In other words, I have to catch Prince Lucifer when he is still asleep in his bed. I shall court drama, chaos and disaster.” She steeled herself. “But very well. I shall do this. I must do this. Heaven help me.”
Henni pressed her hand. “Good luck.”
The footman who was waiting in front of the chambers recognised her. He looked pale and there were dark shadows under his eyes. “You cannot enter now. His Highness and his guests are still within.”
Pippa moistened her lips. “He had another of his revels?”