K ate heard someone squawking her name—her actual name, not Victoria’s—and turned around to find Lady Wrothe waving from the edge of the maze. Henry was wearing a madly fashionable violet and green striped day dress with a little ruff edging the bodice. As Kate came closer, she saw that it was a good thing that ruff existed, or Henry’s breasts would be entirely open to the air.
“Darling!” Henry called. “Come here this minute . . . what on earth are you doing cavorting out on the lake with that prince? Your little turnip of a betrothed is wandering around looking like a dog who’s lost his bone and that, as much as anything, has convinced them all that you’re really your tart of a sister. Of course, they think the prince is trying to steal your virtue.”
“Hush,” Kate said. “Someone will hear you!”
“You can’t hear a thing out here,” Henry said. “Haven’t you noticed? I think it’s all the water. I was desperately trying to eavesdrop on Lady Bantam warring with her husband, but I couldn’t hear more than a few insults about her beard and his floppy poppy, as if we didn’t know all that already.”
“Does she really have a beard?” Kate said. “Come along, Caesar. We’re going to walk this direction.”
“ Dogs ,” Henry said, noticing them for the first time. “Do tell me they’re part of the costume, darling, because I just can’t abide the beasts. I refuse to have them in London when you come to live with me.”
“They belong to Victoria,” Kate said.
“No!” Henry shrieked. “I forgot the animals that tried to gnaw your sister’s nose off!” She stared down with horror. “I have a jeweled dagger, you know. I can give it to you so that you can ward off a sudden attack. I generally stick it in my bosom to draw attention, but the end is quite sharp.”
Freddie was looking up at Kate with his usual expression of complete adoration.
“This is Freddie,” Kate said, “and that one with the jewels is Coco. And Caesar is that tough little customer there.” Caesar was growling at a sparrow, presumably keeping himself in practice.
“Well,” Henry said after a moment of peering at them, “they don’t look like ferocious beasts. I rather like that one.” She pointed to Coco. “She has a way about her. She looks as if she knows her own worth, and believe me, darling, that’s a woman’s most important asset.”
“Coco is utterly vain,” Kate said, laughing.
“Vanity is just another word for confidence,” Henry said, waving her fan in the air. “There’s nothing more enticing to a man. Is she prinked out in jewels or glass?”
“Jewels,” Kate said.
“And she belongs to the feather mattress herself, Mariana? Oddly enough, we seem to have more in common than just your father. I like the idea of a bejeweled dog. Perhaps I’ll get one of those great Russian dogs, the ones that the nobility have over there, and paste him all over with emeralds. Wouldn’t that be pretty?”
“Let’s try the maze,” Kate said, wanting to be out of earshot of the party. She moved toward the entrance.
“There’s no need to be quite so energetic,” Henry said. “I was only standing here to keep out of the sun. My heels are extraordinarily high, and not designed for prancing through shrubbery.”
“They sound very uncomfortable.”
“But they show off my ankles. It’s absolutely horrible getting older, so one simply has to make the best of what doesn’t change.”
“Ankles?”
“And breasts,” Henry said, nodding. “I expect they would have turned into sagging oranges if I’d been lucky enough to have a child. No baby, so I still have a fabulous bosom, while my friends are wrinkled like old prunes.”
“I don’t have one at all,” Kate said. “Just in case you’re wondering, these are wax.”
“As I pointed out last night, they are far too large for your figure. Mine are mostly wax too, of course. I call them my bosom friends.” She had an enchantingly naughty giggle. “Anyway, as far as men are concerned, it’s all about what shows on top. Now, I’ve found the perfect man for you.”
Kate stopped. “You have?”
“Yes, wasn’t that brilliant of me? He’s a second cousin once removed on the side of my second husband, Bartholomew, but then he’s connected as well somehow through Leo—who is already three sheets to the wind, by the way. I stowed him in one of those boats and told the footman not to bring him back to dry land until suppertime. That way he should be steady enough to take me in for the meal.”
“Do you mind?” Kate asked.
“Not particularly,” Henry said. “I knew he wasn’t perfect when I married him, but he’s perfect enough. He drinks a bit too much, but so far”—she cast a saucy look at Kate—“he manages to perform when required.”
Kate snorted.
“Well, thank God, you get a joke. One never knows with virgins.”
“I haven’t been very sheltered in the last few years,” Kate confessed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Henry said. “As long as you’re not as much of a fool as your sister, there’s no need to fuss about a bit of liberty before marriage. Just squeak loudly on your wedding night and your husband will never know.”
“Oh! I didn’t mean that ,” Kate protested.
Henry shrugged. “It’s fashionable to be a maid when you’re a bride, but if you actually bet the wedding cake on most of our ton nuptials, there’d be a lot of champagne and no cake.”
Kate thought that one through. Her mother used to tell her gently that a woman’s virtue was her only true possession. Henry certainly had a different point of view. “I wouldn’t want to end up like my sister.”
“Victoria is notable only for the fact that her mother was such a fool that she taught her nothing about babies,” Henry said. “Otherwise, she did quite well for herself, all things told. That gaudy young man of hers has a sweet estate. And he certainly is infatuated with her.”
“Algie didn’t offer marriage until my stepmother cornered him and told him of the baby.”
“Your sister was a fool to have given him what he wanted without getting a proposal first, but as it happened, she managed to tie him down anyway.”
“With my luck, I’d find myself in Mariana’s situation, raising a child in the country, pretending to have a dead colonel for a husband,” Kate pointed out.
“You have wonderful luck,” Henry said bracingly. “You have me . I informed Dimsdale a few minutes ago that I had recognized you, and he gave me an earful about how wonderful his Victoria is. I’m afraid you’re not living up to his fiancée, darling. He’s all fretful because you were out there on the lake blackening his future wife’s reputation. You should sleep with the pretty prince just to fret the man.”
“That’s going a bit far merely to annoy my brother-in-law.”
“Well, you can’t pretend that it would be indentured labor,” Henry said. “The man glitters like a hot day in Paris.”
“Too much,” Kate said. “He keeps saying he’s not seducing me, but—”
“Of course he is,” Henry said. “And why shouldn’t he? He’s a prince, after all.”
“That doesn’t give him the right to bed whoever crosses his path,” Kate said. “Caesar, get away from there!”
They had somehow come through to the other side of the maze without finding the center, and found the rest of the menagerie instead. There was a pen full of hairy, malodorous goats, and another that housed an ostrich.
“Just look at that bird,” Henry said. “It looks like a short man craning his neck to look down someone’s bodice. We really ought to get back to the lake and find the husband I picked out for you.”
“What’s his name?” Kate asked, pulling sharply on Caesar’s leash. “Come here, you miserable little beast.”
“Your future husband? Dante. Why don’t you let that dog go? The ostrich has an eye on him, see? It’s probably like those snakes, the ones that swallow rabbits. Caesar could feed it for days.”
“Caesar may not be lovable, but I’ve grown rather fond of him,” Kate said, hoping that saying it aloud made it true.
“Well, in that case,” Henry drawled, making it quite clear that she saw through the lie. “Why don’t you let me take the bejeweled one for a bit, and you drag along Freddie and Caesar the Lion. I loathe dogs, of course, but perhaps that one is acceptable.”
So Kate handed over Coco. They met a few people on their way back through the maze, but Henry introduced Kate—as Victoria—with such a crushing air of familiarity that no one dared say a word about her miraculous weight loss.
“How can you introduce me to your cousin?” Kate asked. “You’ll have to call me Victoria, and that won’t do.”
“Oh, we’ll tell him the truth,” Henry said. “And make it seem as if we need his help. He’s the sort who couldn’t resist the chance to jump to your rescue. He won’t approve, not entirely—because, darling, you did say that you wanted someone who won’t ever stray. Dante didn’t even cheat at conkers when he was a boy. And don’t think he’s Italian because of his exotic name; he should have been called John or something, because he’s not flamboyant.”
An image of the restless, glittering prince flashed into Kate’s mind and she shook it off. “He sounds perfect,” she said firmly. “I don’t want anyone flamboyant.”
“He doesn’t need money either, so you needn’t worry about his being a fortune hunter.”
“I’m not worried, because I’m quite sure you’re wrong about my dowry,” Kate said, giving her godmother an apologetic glance. “I thought about it last night. If my mother had left me all that money, she would have said something to me. All those afternoons when my father was in London, while she and I sat together. She taught me how to do embroidery, and how to curtsy to a queen, and how to hold my fork and knife.”
“She was sick such a long time, poor thing,” Henry said. “She didn’t have time.”
“She just got weaker and weaker,” Kate said, around a lump in her throat. “Still, I didn’t think . . . I just came in one morning and she was lying there, but she was gone.”
“You’re going to make me cry,” Henry said bracingly.
“I just—” Kate took a deep breath. “She would have told me.”
“She thought she had time,” Henry said. “We all think we have time, you know. It’s this miracle substance and there seems to be so much of it, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone.” Her voice had an edge that made Kate bite her lip.
“My first husband was older than I was, and I gallivanted around town and generally carried on the way a young wife shouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I did. When he died, I howled for days. Absolutely howled. I hated myself for every moment I’d spent with anyone else.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said, touching her arm.
“But that’s it,” Henry said, turning her head. Her eyes were bright and quite dry. “We never know how much time we have with each other. Even your supposed fiancé, who’s all bursting with self-importance in his lovely purple waistcoat, could be gone tomorrow.”
“Victoria would be—”
“Of course she would,” Henry interrupted. “But my point is that we can’t—we don’t—live like that, remembering that the end is coming. Your mother didn’t count her time because she loved being with you. She let herself forget that death was coming, and what a gift that was. So she never told you about the money; she knew it was there. More interesting is why your father never said anything to you.”
“He actually told me after she died that my mother had left me a dowry, but I was wretched and didn’t want to talk about it. And then he went off and brought home Mariana. The next thing I knew, he was dead as well.”
“Typical of a man,” Henry said. “They always die inconveniently.”
They broke out of the seclusion of the maze to find that the gardens were thronged with elegant gentlepersons. “Now, Dante is very like Bartholomew,” Henry said. “That would be my second husband, the one before Leo. He was decent through and through. We just have to find Dante, and I’ll drag the two of you into a hedge or something and tell him the story.”
“Wait!” Kate said, grabbing her arm. “I don’t want to meet him like this.”
“Well, then, how do you want to meet him?”
“Not in this wig,” Kate hissed at her.
“It’s better than yesterday’s,” Henry said. “I’ve never seen that cherry color, and at least it makes you look fashionable.”
“Can’t we wait and meet him at a later date, when I’m myself?”
“No,” Henry said, “we can’t. He’s on the verge of declaring himself for Effie Starck. She’s practically an octogenarian, at least twenty-two.”
“I’m twenty-three!” Kate said.
“I forgot that. Look, she’s so desperate that she went for Lord Beckham under the table, and he stuck her with a fork. Or no, she stuck him. Later he told everyone that he thought there was a mongrel under the table gnawing at his trousers. I don’t want her anywhere near poor Dante.”
“I would still rather not meet him until I’m in London.”
Henry turned and looked at her.
“I just want to look better than this when I meet your—when I meet Mr. Dante,” Kate confessed.
“He’s not Mr. Dante,” Henry said in an offended kind of way. “I would never pair off my goddaughter with an Italian merchant. He’s Dante Edward Astley, Lord Hathaway.”
“I’m fairly sure that my breasts, the wax parts, are melting,” Kate said desperately, “because my wig is so hot that I’m sweating. Plus I’d rather not have the dogs with me.”
Henry looked her over. “You do look rather hot. The cherry-colored wig doesn’t help.”
“I’m going to my chamber,” Kate said, making up her mind. “Here, give me Coco.”
“I’ll keep her,” Henry said, rather surprisingly. “I like the way she walks. You can tell just by looking at her that she’d rather be out here showing off her jewels than closed up in your chamber.”
Kate looked down to find that Coco had positioned herself just next to the hem of Henry’s gown, as if she knew how well her multicolored look complemented striped silk. “Send her back whenever you wish.”
“Wear a different wig this evening,” Henry said. “I’ll have that handsome devil Berwick seat us together with Dante. Do you have a wig that you actually like?”
“No,” Kate said. And then she added, a little desperately, “My hair is my only asset, Henry. Please, could I just avoid Lord Hathaway until I can meet him as myself?”
“Your hair is your only asset?” Henry snorted. “Look at Coco.”
Kate looked.
“She’s the most vain scrap of animal I’ve ever seen, and she’s utterly irresistible as a result. No one’s going to undervalue her. Do you suppose that she thinks she has only one asset? But you . . . if you tell yourself that hair is all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got. Among other things—and I don’t have time to enumerate them all—you have utterly devastating eyes. That’s Victor’s color, of course; he had gorgeous dark yellow hair, like some sort of lion, and then the green eyes. He was a sight to behold.”
“Victoria sent along a pale green wig that looks better with my eyes than this red one,” Kate offered.
“Wear that one, then. I’ll deal with Berwick, and you screw your courage to the sticking point. Dante is ripe for the plucking and I don’t want Effie to grab him before you.”