A Scandalous Adventure (15 page)

Conrad watched the door close behind the Herzlos party before he turned to Staufer. “Well?”

The three of them stood before the prince, a cloud of guilt hanging over them.

Staufer shook his head and forced himself to meet the prince's eyes. “It is my fault. I was wrong. I should have trusted you. I should have had faith in you. I failed in my duty. I failed you.”

“Failed me?” Conrad looked understandably confused.

Susannah wasn't going to let Max take it all upon himself to clear up that confusion, not when it had all been General Bergen's idea in the first place. “It wasn't Max's fault. I should never have agreed…” she began, but was interrupted by Olivia, who stepped forward and knelt.

“No, Your Highness, the greatest betrayal is mine. I know you will never be able to forgive me.” Olivia lifted eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I am not a real princess.”

“What nonsense is this?” Conrad frowned. “Of course you are. You must not kneel before me.” He went to lift her to her feet, but she turned her face away and wrapped her arms about herself.

“She only wanted to help,” said Susannah, reaching down to lift Olivia up. “That's all any of us wanted to do.”

“I beg you, Sire, let me speak.” Staufer tried to step in front of the women.

Protocol was blown to the wind as all three supplicants tried to speak at once.

It was the prince who finally brought about order with a single sharp word. Faced with his stiff frown, the others were shamed into silence. When the prince finally gave him a nod, Staufer began to provide the explanation.

There was dignity in his recital. Staufer spoke in the unemotional tones of a soldier reporting to his commanding officer. He told of the princess's disappearance, their belief that she had run away, the hope that using Lady Olivia as a substitute would give them enough time to find Princess Mila and avoid a scandal.

“I'll not believe it!” Anger and shock fought for dominance on the prince's face. “It is impossible. There are people who have met the princess. An impostor could never…” He turned to look at Olivia. “Impossible.”

After staring at her for a long minute, he turned back to Max. “A few days. You said you needed a few days to find the princess. But it has been almost two weeks.”

“We were mistaken.” Staufer's mouth was white at the edges. “It was far worse than we had thought.” Still in that flat, military report tone, he recounted the discovery of the dead guard, the revelation of the kidnapping, the involvement of Hugo and Helga Herzlos, the midnight intruder.

Fury flared in the prince's eyes as he stepped toward the captain. “There was danger, real danger? You knew this and still you allowed the princess…” Conrad caught himself. “…these ladies to continue with this masquerade?”

The pain in Max's eyes was unbearable. Susannah stepped forward. “It was our decision, Sire. Max—Captain Staufer—wanted us to leave, but we felt an obligation to continue.”

Conrad turned his anger on her. “An obligation? An obligation to make a fool of me?”

Max flinched but Susannah continued in a steady voice. “We were afraid that if we fled, you and your country might be in greater danger.”

“So I am such a weakling that I must be protected by women,” Conrad said bleakly. “I could not be trusted to deal with a crisis. What did you fear? That I would collapse like a frightened child? That I would go running to my uncle?” His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Yes, that would have been General Bergen's great fear. Those two old men—their hatred of each other rules their every action. But you, Max, I thought you at least were my friend. Had you no faith in me? Why did you…?”

He turned to look at Olivia, who was by now sobbing into Susannah's shoulder. “Was it all lies, then? Yes. All lies. Get out of my sight, all of you.”

* * *

Staufer accompanied them back to their quarters, but he might as well have been somewhere else. Anywhere else. They walked through the endless marble corridors—those blasted endless corridors—as if they had some purpose, but their only purpose was to hide their distress.

Max's face showed such pain that Susannah wanted to weep. Why was he taking all the responsibility on himself? She also wanted to shake him. She wanted to say, “Dammit, it wasn't your fault! This was the general's idea, not yours. You wanted to end it. You wanted to tell the prince the truth, but we wouldn't let you!”

It had never been his idea, and if at the beginning he had thought of it as a lark, a joke—well, so had they all. No one expected it to turn so serious. And when it had turned serious, when they discovered that the princess had not just run off by herself in a fit of temper, Max was the one who wanted to end it. He had seen the danger, but they had forced him to go on with it, and he couldn't end it without betraying all of them.

Instead, they had betrayed him.
She
had betrayed him. And the others—Aunt Augusta hadn't wanted to give up the excitement; Olivia hadn't wanted to lose the chance to help the prince; the general… Susannah had no idea what the general wanted, unless it was to thwart Count Herzlos and his family. But what they all wanted would not have mattered if she had not insisted on staying. She knew that. Max would have overridden the other protests. Hers was the only one that had stopped him.

Were it not for her, he would have done the honorable thing. To protect them, he would have sent them all to safety. Then he would have told the prince everything, doubtless taking all the blame on himself. He had put aside his best judgment because she insisted on staying, and though she had not admitted it, she had insisted for the purely selfish reason that she wanted to stay with him. She hadn't thought about what would be best for him, only about what she wanted for herself. She was an arrogant, selfish fool.

When they finally reached the princess's suite, Olivia ran into her bedchamber, probably to weep in private. That was something else for Susannah to feel guilty about. She had seen that Olivia was falling in love with the prince. She should have done something to stop it. There must have been something she could have done.

She spun around and faced the wall, her hands pressed to her mouth. What was she to do? She was supposed to be the sensible one, the one who would take care of the others and see to it that they did not get into trouble. Instead, she had thought only of herself and ignored her responsibilities. Well, what she had to do now was deal with the consequences of her failure.

It was all too humiliating.

She took a deep breath and turned back to face Max, who was staring at the floor, his jaw clenched.

“Forgive me,” she said, as he raised his eyes to look at her. “I should have listened to you when you wanted us to leave.”

He shook his head. “No, you must forgive me. It is all my fault. I should have trusted him. I decided, when I had no right to decide. I was too sure I could protect him, protect you. In my pride, I thought I could do it all, and I failed. I have dishonored myself.” He reached out and touched her cheek, just a feather of a touch. “The truth is that I wanted to keep you near. I did not want you to disappear from my life.”

“I wanted to stay near you too,” she whispered.

They began stumbling over each other's words, reaching out their hands first in supplication and then to offer comfort. Before they knew it, they were clinging to each other in desperate longing. He rained kisses on her face, on her hair, and crushed her to him. She clung to him, sobs punctuating the kisses she pressed on him.

Finally, Max lifted his head and slowly stepped back from her, his arms resting on her shoulders as if he could not bear to stop touching her. “I must go. You understand, do you not? In my arrogance I have failed my prince. Honor demands that I redeem myself.”

Susannah nodded but did not speak.

“To do that, I must find the princess. I should never have left the search to others. I should not have…” He stopped with a short laugh. “Useless now to say what I should not have done. All I can do is try to repair the damage.”

She nodded again. Painful though it was, she understood. Apologies were meaningless now. Action was needed to bring things around. “Where will you go?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I must start where she disappeared. Someone may have seen something. There may be witnesses, some hint. I was careless at first, thinking she had just run off, and later…” He smiled wryly and lifted a hand to touch her cheek. “Later I left things to the general, and now I am not even certain that he wanted to find her. I should not have done so, but…”

“No matter. When you find her, you will return.” She spoke with absolute conviction.

“You will wait?”

“Here, if the prince permits. Otherwise…”

“I will come to you. Whatever happens, wherever you are, I will come to you.”

“And I will be waiting.”

When the door had closed behind him, Susannah stood, frozen, until Lev padded to her side and pushed his head under her hand. She ran her fingers through the thick fur as he looked up at her face. “You saw all that, didn't you? And you understand.”

The dog nudged her toward the bedroom, and she obediently allowed herself to be herded to the bed. “Yes,” she told him, “I would like to lie down.” She did so, and Lev remained beside her, standing guard.

She smiled when she realized that the dog was watching the wall where the door to the staircase had opened only a few days before. “Clever Lev,” she murmured. “You remember where the danger came from. If only I knew where the danger lies now. If only I could help Max now.”

She sat up abruptly and focused on the panel that disguised the door to the staircase. Her eyes narrowed. It had been night, and it had been dark. Josef had checked it, but only by candlelight, and he was looking for other intruders. The next day, when they looked more carefully, they were only interested in finding the mechanism to open the door. Once they had done that, they had simply wedged it shut.

However, they had not bothered to examine the passage itself. Not carefully. The intruder could have dropped something. There could be some clue in there, something that could help them.

She walked over to the panel, removed the wedge, and pressed the board that released the latch. The door swung open silently. The silence gave her pause. There had been no noise the other night either when the intruder came in. Only well-oiled hinges move so silently. Had they been specially oiled in preparation for the attempt to kidnap Olivia? Or was this a regularly used way of moving around the castle? Or perhaps of spying on guests who were given these chambers?

Returning to the sitting room, she lit one of the oil lamps, adjusted the wick, and carried it back to the staircase. It provided some light in the stairwell—more than a candle, at least—and she descended carefully. A thud behind her almost made her drop the lamp, but her heart resumed its normal rhythm when she saw that it was only Lev, following behind her. “You should have told me you were coming,” she scolded. “If I had dropped the lamp on this wooden staircase, I might have burned down the entire palace. I don't think that would have pleased the prince one bit.”

Lev just looked at her. The dog's calm was reassuring. She took a deep breath and continued the descent. Unfortunately, there seemed to be nothing on the staircase but dust. Plenty of dust. She held up her skirts with her free hand in an effort to keep from getting them filthy. Then she reached a landing and she saw that although the staircase continued down, there was an opening to the side. It was so dark that she would not have noticed it had there not been footprints in the dust to show the way.

As she moved slowly through the narrow passage, she could hear voices. She stopped to listen, but could not make out the words. The voices were up ahead. She almost turned and ran back. What excuse could she possibly give for being here?

She rallied her courage. If the voices belonged to servants, she would not need to give any excuse. And if they belonged to any of the villains? Well, she doubted they had any more business being in this passage than she did, and she had Lev to protect her.

So she continued cautiously down the passage and soon realized that the voices were coming not from the passage but from one of the rooms. Of course. The passage had been built for servants, so naturally it would open into more than one room. As she drew closer, she could recognize Helga's shrill accents and Hugo's rumble. At the door, she pressed her ear to the crack.

Hugo was railing about the prince's sudden popularity with the populace. “…Showing off for that insipid little blonde. We must do something about it.”

“It won't last.” Helga sounded amused but definite. “Our dear papa will have him do something stupid, and his bubble of popularity will burst. You really must learn to keep your head, Hugo.”

“But suppose Staufer persuades him to do something else?”

“No need to worry about that.” A third voice, with a bark of laughter. Dieter Angriffer? It sounded like the sneering tones of that reptile. “Our friend Maximillian von Staufer will no longer be a problem. I've taken care of him.”

“You have?” Hugo sounded hopeful, but Susannah felt a stab of panic and clenched her fingers in Lev's coat.

“I've had a message sent to him, telling him that the princess is in your hunting lodge at Krassau.”

“What?” Helga screeched, no longer amused. “But that's where she is!”

“Indeed, my love,” Angriffer drawled. “Considerate of me, is it not? When my men ambush him, they will not need to carry him so far. He is such an ox.”

“But why…” Hugo was sputtering.

Angriffer sighed. “Be sensible. The original plan, in which you rescue the princess after her father invades—or threatens to invade—Sigmaringen may no longer be possible. The appearance of this imposter has thrown all in disarray. Even Mila is not stupid enough to believe that she has been held for weeks in your hunting lodge without your knowledge. We may have to eliminate her just to save our necks. If that becomes necessary, I would prefer to have Staufer available to take the blame as her assassin.”