The room was a bit stuffy, so Petunia took off her cloak. She carefully smoothed its folds across the foot of the bed. Jonquil had been jealous when she’d seen it, especially after Petunia had embroidered the hood with silver bullion her godfather had given her. But the one perk of being the shortest was that Petunia never had to share her clothes. That was also how she had gotten a whole cloak out of Rose’s old gown. Of course, that was also the drawback of being both the shortest and the youngest: she rarely got anything new. It was much more economical to just cut off the frayed hems of someone else’s gowns.
Still, her height (or lack thereof) made her look more like her mother than any of the other girls did, and Iris griped that it had made her Father’s favorite, which Petunia didn’t mind at all. She was the only one of the sisters allowed to cut flowers from the special hothouses, and she was even working with her father and Reiner Orm, the head gardener, to develop a new strain of rose, which she planned on calling Maude’s Sunrise. The flowers would have a blush pink center but be true yellow at the edges of their petals.
There was knock on the door.
“Enter,” Petunia said, pushing at her hair to make sure all her pins were still in place.
“Hello, my dear,” said the countess. Delicious smells wafted from a covered tray that she was carrying. “Are you hungry?”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” Petunia said, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She hoped that the countess wouldn’t hear her stomach growling as her nose caught the aromas of chicken soup and fresh bread.
Petunia pulled over one of the room’s two chairs and began to eat without hesitation. The countess sat in the other chair, hands neatly folded.
“I’m sure you’ve had quite the taxing day,” the older woman said.
Petunia gave her a wry look rather than answering. The soup was excellent, and the little round loaf of bread was so fresh it steamed when she pulled it apart.
“I don’t know why Oliver did what he did—” the countess began.
“Do you mean robbing my coach or abducting me?” Petunia did not bother to keep the tartness out of her voice. “The Wolves of the Westfalian Woods have been harassing travelers for several years now, growing bolder by the season. Surely this is not a fit pastime for an earl?”
“It isn’t some hobby that my son has taken a fancy to,” the countess replied, equally tart. “I’m afraid that we have had little choice.”
“How do you not have a choice?” Petunia put down her spoon. “It’s not like an earl has to steal to make his living. He should have farms to provide income, and …”
But the countess was shaking her head. “Do you know the name of this earldom?”
“Er. No,” Petunia said after a moment’s thought.
“Saxeborg-Rohlstein.”
Petunia frowned. Their governess had insisted that the princesses memorize the names of all of the duchies and earldoms in Westfalin, yet Saxeborg-Rohlstein didn’t sound at all familiar.
“I would be surprised if you knew it,” the countess said, reading Petunia’s baffled expression correctly. “It ceased to exist when you were … five? Six at the oldest.”
“How does an earldom cease to exist?”
“We won the war with Analousia,” the countess said, and now Petunia was even more confused. The countess sounded almost angry about the Westfalian victory.
The twelve-year-long war with Analousia had been one of the bloodiest episodes in Ionian history. Queen Maude had made her second pact with the King Under Stone in order to bring about the end of the war, which the sisters suspected had been engineered by the King Under Stone in order to bring Maude more securely into his power. And though the cost of the war had been awful, with great loss of life and wealth on both sides, Westfalin had prevailed in the end, which should have delighted the dowager countess.
But clearly it did not.
“When the boundary between Westfalin and Analousia was redrawn as part of the treaty,” the dowager countess went on, “my husband’s earldom was cut in half, and the pieces were given away. Half stayed in Westfalin, the other half is now in Analousia.” She took a piece of the bread, toying with it as she stared into the distance. “The earldom was small and almost entirely forest. And there was no one to remind Gregor that it even existed. My husband was killed in one of the final battles, when Oliver was only seven years old. We didn’t even realize that the boundary had changed until some of our men were arrested for poaching in what had just become the King of Analousia’s forest. I suppose he doesn’t mind us living here in the old hall, as long as we don’t kill any deer.”
Petunia set down the cup of milk, slopping it over her hand. “We’re in Analousia?”
“That’s right,” the dowager countess told her. “The highway is now the boundary of the two countries, whereas it used to be solidly in Westfalin. The estate that was my husband’s seat is still in Westfalin but was given to a duke as a reward after the war. I assume that Gregor thought our entire family had been wiped out, and by the time I was able to take Oliver to Bruch to petition for its restoration, it was too late.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Petunia spluttered. “We won the war! Why would we give Analousia any of our land? And if you were really a friend of my mother’s, then Father would have listened to you when you went to him for help!”
Petunia’s face was burning hot, and there was a tight feeling in her chest. Her father would never take away someone’s land and just give it to someone else! Preposterous!
“My dear,” Lady Emily said quietly. “By the time Oliver and I went to court, you and your sisters were caught up in whatever mischief it was that saw your dancing slippers worn through every night.”
Petunia thought her head would burst, it felt so hot, but the dowager countess was moving on.
“We spent weeks trying to get an audience with Gregor, but he could not—or simply would not—see us. Then they arrested dear Anne Lewiston, your governess, on charges of witchcraft, and a friend advised me to flee before I, too, was charged. I had once been a confidant of your mother’s, after all, and I was a foreigner. I brought my sons back to the forest to hide. We went to Analousia and tried petitioning King Philippe for help in regaining that part of the estate, but since my sons were Westfalian and I Bretoner, he would not listen to us either.”
That was something that Petunia could believe. King Philippe’s bitterness over losing the war ran deep, and she knew that her father’s every message to Analousia had to be carefully worded so as to avoid the merest hint of gloating.
“The only good news,” Lady Emily continued, “was that no one seemed to want this old hall. We’d taken refuge here during the war, when the fighting came too close to our estate, and here we have stayed. Eventually some of the men turned to crime to feed us. Stealing from farms, poaching deer and pheasant, surviving as best we could. We tried to send most of the people away. A few left, but many stayed to support Oliver in the only way they could.” She smiled sadly. “It would have been easier if they had all gone, but we hadn’t the heart to refuse them. Karl, the large man you saw earlier, discovered that the easiest way to live was to rob the coaches that come along the highway, and then send people out with small amounts of money or jewels to various markets to purchase what we need. And you see how the old hall has been kept dilapidated? All to hide from the Analousians, though it is rare for anyone to wander into this part of the forest.”
Petunia was completely aghast. She had never heard such … she had had no idea that there were people in her own country who lived this way! Well, in what had been her own country. She felt vaguely uneasy about having crossed into Analousia without knowing it. Shouldn’t there have been some sort of fence or gate? Something guarded by soldiers?