Kidnapped

Petunia promised herself that she would not panic. She would behave at all times in a manner befitting a princess. No matter how difficult it became.

At least she’d been left alone for a bit. Admittedly, it was in a room that belonged to that young man … who, it seemed, was an earl … who had kidnapped her. While the earl’s mother scolded him for the kidnapping, a smiling woman in a patched but clean gown had taken Petunia into the hall to rest. As though she would curl up on a strange man’s bed!

Instead she paced. The ornate bed filled most of the little room, but it still felt good to move. She had been frightened, when Oliver had first abducted her, that he was going to … er, ruin her, as Maria would say. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she knew it was a terrible thing that was only talked about in whispers. But with his mother here, she thought she was fairly safe. Now she just had to convince them to let her go.

She checked the little watch pinned to her bodice and sighed. She should have arrived at the Volenskaya estate by now. The grand duchess would be concerned, and her grandson, the handsome Prince Grigori … Petunia suppressed a delicious little shiver. Prince Grigori would be beside himself with worry, she was sure. He had probably waited at the gates for her, and when she hadn’t arrived … would he dare search for her in the darkness? He was a fearless huntsman—she was sure that he would.

She decided that she was in no real danger, now that she was under the protection of one of her mother’s oldest friends. Not that she remembered Lady Emily. Maude had brought several ladies-in-waiting with her from Breton, most of whom had returned to Breton when Maude died. Petunia had been just two years old at the time. A few of the ladies had married Westfalian nobles and stayed behind, like this countess, and one had become the princesses’ governess. Trapped in the bandit earl’s bedchamber for the time being, Petunia had ample time to wonder just what had happened to this particular lady-in-waiting.

This hall, of a design that had not been in fashion for a good five hundred years, looked like a strong wind would blow it over from the outside, but within, the masonry was freshly repaired. The stairs to the upper gallery were only a few years old at most. The main doors were hanging askew, but from the inside she had seen that they were actually propped in place with thick beams. There was an entire village’s worth of people outside, going about their business as if this was just an ordinary day. She supposed that it was, for them. But if Oliver was an earl, why was he robbing coaches as one of the notorious Wolves of the Westfalian Woods? And why were all his people hiding here in this carefully maintained squalor?

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?

“But I still don’t understand why part of Westfalin is in Analousia now,” Petunia said after a moment, though really that was the least of her questions.

“Because Gregor took a large portion of the Analousian plains to the north of here,” the dowager countess explained, ever patient. “The vineyards there are unparalleled; even after the battles that were fought in them. As a small concession to Philippe, Gregor gave him this little piece of forest, which straightens the border between our two lands and makes the road easier to access for the Analousians.”

Petunia’s head was spinning. “Oh” was all she could say. She thought about asking why Oliver and his mother didn’t go back to court and demand his rights as an earl now that he was grown and the mystery of the worn-out dancing slippers had been solved (not that the reason behind it had been made public). But she knew how easy it was to get used to things, and how much simpler it was to just continue doing them the way they had always been done. After all, she had danced nearly every night of her life from the time she could walk until she was almost seven years old. And she had liked it, even though she and her sisters were under a curse, because it was all she had ever known.

And when she was eleven and her father sent her halfway around the world to Russaka as some sort of genteel hostage, she hadn’t said a word, either. She had simply gone and smiled and pretended to understand what all the Russakan ladies were saying when they chucked her chin and patted her head as though she were a small dog. It was just too easy to do what you were accustomed to doing.

Not to mention the guilt she felt, knowing that it was at least partially her fault that Lady Emily hadn’t been able to get an audience with King Gregor in the first place. If she and her sisters had found some way to fight back earlier, to defeat the King Under Stone before the rumors of witchcraft and murder, then the kingdom wouldn’t have been in such a shambles after the war.

“Every year it grows harder and harder to stop,” the dowager countess said softly, once again interpreting Petunia’s thoughts. “We talk about it all the time. Or at least, I talk, and Oliver pretends to listen. I try to convince him to go to King Gregor and beg for clemency. But he could be hanged a hundred times over, earl or no earl, for what he has done.”

“If you let me go, I promise to talk to my father for you,” Petunia said, attempting to soothe the older woman. “I’m sure once he hears your reasons it …”

But Lady Emily was shaking her head. “Please don’t, Your Highness. It will only make matters worse if he hears it from you, after Oliver kidnapped you! No, I’ve told my son that this is the catalyst; he must come clean now. It would help if you would put in a good word for us when the time is right, but this is something that Oliver should do himself. After he delivers you safely home. Or wherever it was you were going,” she added.

“Best go there first, yes,” Petunia agreed. “The grand duchess must be frantic by now.”

“The grand duchess?” The dowager countess’s eyes widened. “The Grand Duchess Volenskaya? The Duke of Hrothenborg’s widow?”

“Yes, do you know her too?” Petunia had been wondering if she should ask the dowager countess more about her mother. Petunia barely remembered her mother and knew her mostly through the beautiful gardens that her father had made for his bride.

“By reputation only,” the dowager countess said. “But why, may I ask, are you traveling to her estate? Alone?”

“I met the grand duchess in Russaka a few years ago,” Petunia said. “Now that she is in residence in her Westfalian estate, she asked for me to visit.”

“I see,” the dowager countess said, her voice chill.

Petunia didn’t know what to do. The look on the older woman’s face was frightening her. Still, if the dowager countess had been friend of her mother’s, and she was so kind to Petunia now, surely it would not hurt to ask.

“My lady? Why don’t you like the grand duchess?”

“I don’t know her one way or the other, so cannot like or dislike her,” said Lady Emily stiffly. Then she softened a little. “It … simply … makes me nervous to see someone as young as you traveling alone.”

Petunia was almost certain that that wasn’t what the countess had been thinking.