Miranda Jarrett – Princess of Fortune (страница 2)

“Bah, Her Majesty has no heart,” muttered Anna, purposefully just loud enough for Isabella to hear. “No heart at all.”

“Enough, Anna,” said Isabella sharply. It didn’t matter that the older woman had become her lady’s maid by default, one of the last few servants who hadn’t panicked and fled the palace, or that Anna would be her one link with her old life as they traveled together. Isabella’s mother insisted that such familiarity should never be tolerated, no matter the circumstances. “It is not your place to fault my mother, unless you, too, wish to be branded a traitor.”

“Traitors, traitors,” muttered Anna, linking her finger and thumb together in the sign against evil. The gesture made her look even more like an ancient little crow, dressed in black from her stockings to the kerchief tied beneath her chin. “What does loyalty mean these days, eh, with the French devils at our gates?”

“Base-born rabble, nothing more,” countered Isabella, automatically repeating her father’s description of the tawdry French army. To her family, such upstarts were below contempt, unworthy to be even an enemy of their own ancient kingdom. “Our brave army will not waver before such a mob.”

Anna sniffed loudly, that sniff saying much about the pitiful chances she gave the brave Monteverdian army. “Your bonnet and gloves, my princess.”

Isabella lifted her chin so Anna could tie the bonnet’s silk ribbons in a bow, then took the gloves herself, unwilling to let Anna see how her fingers were trembling. Weren’t the Fortunaro women as famous for their strength as for their beauty? Couldn’t she prove herself worthy of her mother’s faith in her to do what must be done?

“Her Majesty said for you to make every haste, my princess,” insisted Anna. “Her Majesty said—”

“It is not your place to speak with such freedom, Anna,” said Isabella curtly, a perfect echo of her mother’s reprimands. “Do you see me disobeying my mother? Do you see me dawdling? Rather it is you and your clumsy old fingers that have delayed me with my dressing.”

“Forgive my clumsiness, my princess,” mumbled Anna, bobbing her head up and down by way of apology. As she did, a rough little pendant slipped free of her bodice: three twigs lashed with red thread into a triangle and strung on a black cord.

“What is that around your neck, Anna?” asked Isabella suspiciously. “You know heathen charms and talismans are not permitted in the palace.”

Quickly Anna tucked the pendant back into her bodice. “It’s naught to do with the devil, nor with the priests, my princess. It’s a family sign, that is all.”

“It still has no place here, and I do not wish to see it again. Now come, bring that lantern, so we might be on our way.”

For the last time, Isabella hurried down the marble staircase, the weight of the treasure stitched into her clothes slowing her steps. Down one flight, then another, into the dark, narrower hallway that led to the lower gardens and the beach. She’d never come this way by night, and certainly never with only a single servant holding a lantern against the darkness. Cobwebs brushed and clung to her clothes, and as she heard the mice scrambling to keep clear of the light, she whispered a quick prayer to guard her against whatever dangers might lie within the murky shadows.

Oh, that bats and rats and spiders and cobwebs might be her only threats!

“This way, my princess,” said Anna, puffing with exertion as she unbolted the last door for Isabella. “The English sailors will be waiting for you on the beach.”

Isabella nodded, holding her heavy skirts to one side as she slipped through the door. Vines had been allowed to grow over the door to disguise it, and as she shoved them aside, the lacquered heels of her slippers sank into the soft sand. The air was cooler here near the sea, and Isabella could taste the sharp tang of salt as she nervously licked her lips. At the water’s edge, perhaps thirty feet away, she could make out the dark shadow of a longboat pulled up on the shore, with men sitting waiting at the oars and two others standing aft, doubtless looking for her. Large men, lowborn and rough, speaking quietly among themselves.

Englishmen.

“Go ahead, Anna,” she said, striving to hide her anxiety as she hung back in the shadows. “Tell those men to come greet me properly.”

But Anna didn’t move, her wizened face inside the black scarf as set as a wooden mask. “You tell them yourself, my princess. I’ll go no farther, not with you.”

Isabella stared at her, stunned. “How dare you speak to me with such insolence? Come here at once, Anna, and do as I say!”

But Anna only shook her head, jutting out her pointed chin for emphasis. “I will never leave Monteverde, my princess,” she said, hissing the words like a curse, “and never with a spoiled little bitch like you.”

Isabella gasped with shock. No other servant had ever spoken to her like that; no, no other person in her memory ever had. “Anna, how dare you—”

But Anna had already slammed the door shut against Isabella.

“Wait!” Isabella grabbed the doorknob, frantically jiggling it with both hands. “Anna, open this door at once, I say! At once!”

But all she heard through the heavy door was the sound of the bolt in the lock scraping into place, and the echoes of Anna’s footsteps fading away down the hall, abandoning her to her fate alone.

“Anna!” she shouted, her fear rising by the second as she thumped her fists against the door. “Anna, come back now!”

“Miss?”

Instantly she turned around, her heart racing in her chest. She could make out little of the English sailor’s face in the shadows, but there was no mistaking how he loomed over her, the prow of his cocked hat pointing downward as he addressed her. The long, dark boat cloak he wore made him seem larger still, but from the braid on his hat and the brass buckles on his shoes, she guessed he must at least be an officer, and perhaps what among the English passed for a gentleman. Beside him was another man with a long pigtail down his back, dressed in rough canvas trousers and a worn, striped jersey that marked him clearly as a common sailor.

And these two were to be her saviors. Oh, Mama, what have you done?

“I’m sorry to have frighted you, miss—er, that is, signora,” said the officer. “But I do need to know if you are—”

“I am the Princess di Fortunaro,” she interrupted in imperious English, drawing herself up as tall as she could. She must be brave and proud, and hide her fear for her family’s sake. “I am not a ‘miss.’ You must address me as ‘my princess.’”

“Very well, then,” said the officer heartily as he touched the front of his hat, and also obviously relieved that she spoke English. “I am Lieutenant Goodwin, at your service, my princess.”

Isabella nodded but didn’t answer. She wasn’t precisely sure what to say in return, true, but she was also waiting for him to show proper regard and respect, and to bow low to her. Wasn’t it enough that she’d made the effort to address him in his own language? But she must recall that he was English, and the English were widely known to have no manners whatsoever. Barbarians, all of them, from their Hanoverian king on down.

“You have, ah, any followers who will be joining you?” he asked, looking past her to the closed door, and cheerfully unaware of how much of a barbarian he was. “Servants?”

“No,” she said, already feeling more alone than she’d ever been before. “There are none that I can trust.”

“No abigail to tend to you?” he asked with surprise. “You’ll be the first lady the old Corinthian has ever seen, you know, there among all us hoary sailors.”

She regarded him with chilly disdain, wishing to put more distance between them. “Not a lady, Lieutenant. A Fortunaro princess.”

“Aye, aye, quite right you are,” he said quickly. “I warrant you’re ready to come aboard, my princess? We’ve already stowed your dunnage, and we’re ready to shove off whenever it suits.”

Isabella frowned. She had worked hard at her English lessons, particularly hard once Mama had decided she must go to London, but these words, these expressions—aboard? stowing? dunnage? shoving off?—had not been in her tutor’s primer. Whatever was this Englishman asking of her?

Gruffly he cleared his throat. “We cannot keep the ship waiting much longer, my princess, not if we wish to get you away safely. We’ll lose the tide.”

The ship, and the tide. That much Isabella could understand. She looked beyond the man and the longboat, and farther out in the bay she now could make out the dark silhouette of the English ship, outlined by the lights from its lanterns. At such a distance it seemed small, as insubstantial as canvas scenery for a saint’s day pageant, and hardly sturdy enough to carry her and these men clear to London.

To London.

“My princess?” The lieutenant was offering the crook of his arm to her as support, as gallant a gesture, she supposed, as an Englishman could muster. “You are ready?”

Oh, please, God, please, grant me find the courage to be strong and brave and worthy, to be a true Fortunaro princess!

She took a deep breath, holding her head as high as if she were wearing her best diamond tiara instead of a plain plush bonnet for travel. She could do this, and she would, one step at a time. Ignoring the lieutenant’s arm, she bunched her skirts to one side to lift them from the sand, and began walking—one step, then the next, and the next after that—across the sand to the waiting boat.