“Goodness, Princess Petunia!” The prince held her for a moment before setting her on her feet. “Must we keep meeting in these dire circumstances?” He smiled down at her.
Petunia laughed uneasily and disentangled herself. She did her best to make the apricot satin pool around her feet in a becoming way. She wished that the prince hadn’t reminded her of how he’d nearly run her down on his horse the day before, and then hustled her rather roughly onto the estate while his men looked for Oliver, despite her protests that he was just a shepherd who had helped her. In the dazzle of Prince Grigori’s smile it was easy to forget all that, but less so when he brought it up.
To her relief he began to talk of pleasantries like the sort of dishes she could expect from his grandmother’s celebrated Russakan chef. Grigori led her into the dining room, where the Grand Duchess Volenskaya kissed Petunia on the cheek and told her that the apricot gown was so ravishing that she should keep it, making Petunia feel even better.
And once dinner was served, Petunia was in heaven. Not only was the food divine—the very best dishes that she remembered from Russaka, served exquisitely on gold-edged plates—but the only diners were herself, Prince Grigori, and the grand duchess. She had been worried that the grand duchess might have invited other young people and that Petunia would have to vie for the attention of the duchess and her grandson. But it was only the three of them, so she basked in their compliments and listened with fascination as the grand duchess talked of her youth in the dark forests of Russaka.
The only awkward moment came when Prince Grigori asked what Petunia had been doing in the company of one of the two-legged wolves he was hunting for her father.
“I beg your pardon?” Petunia tilted her head to one side, affecting confusion. “A wolf? That man who pushed me out of the way? I thought you said he was a gypsy.”
“A gypsy?” Prince Grigori frowned. “You said he was a shepherd. And did you not see the mask he wore?”
“Actually, no,” Petunia said. “He came and went so quickly that I never got a proper look at him at all.”
“But you were held at gunpoint by those men just the day before,” Prince Grigori said. “Did you not even glimpse the horrible snout of that mask coming over your shoulder?”
Petunia feigned a shudder and hoped that it looked real. “I didn’t … I suppose I was just so frightened. It was all happening so fast, and I—” She stopped herself just in time from saying that she was afraid that the prince was going to slash her face with his hunting whip. Looking back, she was embarrassed that she could have ever thought such a thing of Grigori. “I suppose I just wasn’t expecting one of them to leap out of nowhere and save me. At first I thought it was the kindly woodcutter who had taken me most of the way to your estate, ma’am.” She nodded at the grand duchess, who was watching the exchange with an expression of displeasure.
“And why did this helpful woodcutter not bring you all the way to my gates?” The grand duchess raised one eyebrow, still dark despite her age, though Petunia rather wondered if that was cosmetic rather than natural.
“I begged him not to,” Petunia replied promptly, glad to be able to use some of the truth. “He had taken me so far already, I felt guilty making him go all the way to the gates with me, as though I were a child. He … he was Analousian, you see,” she invented. “So once we could see the walls, and he told me that the gates were just around the bend, I urged him to return to his family. He had been gone only a few minutes, which is why at first I thought it was he who had pushed me off the road. But when you said gypsies, Your Highness”—and now a nod at Prince Grigori, who was still looking skeptical—“I was quite panic-stricken and wanted nothing more than to get away, so I didn’t look behind me at all.”
“I see,” Prince Grigori said, looking only slightly mollified.
Petunia relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the meal. She also enjoyed having Prince Grigori walk her to the door of her bedchamber afterward and kiss her hand as he bade her good night. Really, it was hard to believe that he was the same person on the black horse she had been afraid of the day before. He was all easy smiles and gallant words, just as he had been in Russaka. And now that she was sixteen, the age difference between them seemed hardly to matter.
Giving a happy sigh, she went in to be undressed by Olga and tucked into bed, where she hoped to dream of dancing in the arms of Prince Grigori. The one disappointment in being the grand duchess’s only guest was that there would be no excuse to hold a ball.
She drifted off with a smile that was soon chased from her lips. Rather than dreaming of Grigori, she dreamed that Kestilan and his surviving brothers crawled up the wall to her bedroom window again. They filled her dreams with whispers, whispers of how she and her sisters would be their brides before the moon was full.
Witness
When Oliver arrived home the next morning, Lady Emily was standing in the doorway of the old hall, looking pale and drawn. Her eyes searched her son for any sign of injury.
“I’m fine, but I wanted to make certain that Petunia was all right,” he said in a low voice.
His mother saw several people sidling closer with curious faces, so she smiled and threw up her hands theatrically. “Never worry me like that again,” she scolded. She took Oliver’s arm. “Come have something to eat; you must be famished.”
Oliver let his mother lead him into the room on the upper gallery of the old hall, where they dined. He slumped in one of the chairs while she sent for food and waited until someone had brought him roasted chicken and potatoes. When they were alone once more, and after Oliver had bitten into the largest potato and burnt his tongue in the process, he began to speak. He told his mother everything that had happened from Petunia’s nearly being run down by Prince Grigori’s horse to the realization that it was the grand duchess’s grandson who was tracking him and his men to hiding in the old hothouse.
As he related each part of the story, his mother’s face grew whiter and whiter until he feared she might faint. He reached out a hand to her.
“It’s all right, Mother. But … what does this all mean?”
“I don’t know,” Lady Emily admitted. “But I’ve told you how those poor girls were accused of witchcraft. Their governess was nearly put to death for teaching it to them.”
“Do you think they were guilty?”
“I knew Anne,” his mother said, shaking her head. “She is no more a witch than I am. But something was causing all that horror at the palace: the worn-out dancing slippers and the dead princes, you’ve heard about that as well.”
“Of course.” Oliver drummed on the table and stopped himself with an effort, forcing down a bite of the cooled potatoes.
Of course. The situation with the worn-out dancing slippers was what had prevented his mother from getting him his rights as an earl after the death of his father in the war. Not that he blamed her. He blamed King Gregor. He supposed he could blame Petunia, too, but she would only have been five or six years old, so the very idea was ludicrous. And it was very hard to blame Petunia for anything after hearing her crying out in the night and seeing her menaced by creatures made of shadow.
“There’s something to all this,” his mother went on. “There’s some connection between the grand duchess and the earlier tragedies. I would stake my life on it.”
“But what?” Oliver shook his head, tearing off a hunk of bread to sop up the gravy. “Because the grand duchess is one of the Nine Daughters of Russaka? What would that have to do with worn-out dancing slippers?” He tried not to sound derisive. He really did want his mother’s opinions on the matter, but if she started talking about fairy stories again …