Newport, Rhode Island
July 1899
Dear Ellen,
By the time you see this note, I will be on my way to my new life as Mrs. Francis Pratt. Francis loves me and I love him and I want nothing more in the world than to be with him, not even thrones or crowns. Francis has borrowed a boat to sail me away—not for a year and a day like the owl and the pussycat but for always.
I feel terrible leaving you like this. I am truly grateful for all you’ve done for me. If there’s anyone I mind hurting, it’s you. I have tried to reconcile myself to marrying the prince, truly I have tried, but how can I marry him when my heart belongs to another? I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.
I know it is a great deal to ask, but would you tell my brother and the prince for me?
I hope you will be happy for me when you know how happy I am.
With love,
Maybelle
PS. If we have girls, I hope you will come and teach them music.
Maybelle’s room was empty but there were signs of hasty activity.
Fabric protruded through the closed doors of the armoire, as if someone had swung them shut in a hurry, not bothering to shove the clothes properly back inside first. Maybelle’s bookcase had telling gaps where her favorite novels had once stood, empty spaces like missing teeth. It gave the shelf a lopsided jack-o’-lantern grin. Her monogrammed silver-backed brush and comb had been taken from her dressing table.
By the time you see this note, she had written.
How long? Ellen ran for the door, wrenching it open, not sure whether to alert the household or try to find Maybelle herself. If the world knew, Maybelle would be ruined. But to let Maybelle elope with Pratt . . . Ellen wasn’t sure which was worse. Then she remembered Pratt yesterday, hanging about Mrs. Schuyler’s door, begging for money. Pratt, dipping Maybelle in the ocean.
Pratt was worse. Once he married Maybelle he’d have full control of her money and her person.
But how? Where? Sail away, she’d said. With Maybelle, one could never tell if she was being poetical or just stating the unvarnished truth.
It would have to be a boat, wouldn’t it? The drive would be clogged with carriages. There’d be no way to make a hasty escape that way—someone would be bound to see them. But to slink off in the other direction, through the gardens, down the cliffside . . . Yes, that they could do with relative ease, mingling with the other guests.
Maybelle had been there while the prince was singing. She wouldn’t have dared been elsewhere; there were too many eyes on her. But after . . . oh yes, it would have been easy enough to slip away after, while Ellen was deep in conversation with Maybelle’s betrothed and the guests were mingling and jostling, distracted by their own flirtations and dramas. Run up to her room, grab her favorite things . . . That would take, what, five minutes? Ten?
The interlude with the prince had felt like an eternity, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes in reality. Ellen tried to take comfort in that. Maybelle and Pratt couldn’t have gone far. Not yet.
She slipped out a side door, into the loggia—and bumped right into the prince, smoking a cigar in the shadow of the columns.
Just as he’d been the first time she’d met him.
Ellen had never been so glad to see anybody. If there was one person in the world she could trust with this, it was he. “Your Excellency—”
“Sebastiano,” he corrected her. He pitched his cigar aside with a quick, decisive movement, clasping her arms in his hands, his face alight with sudden triumph. “You’ve reconsidered.”
“No.” Ellen wrenched free. “It’s Maybelle. She’s eloped.”
“Eloped?” He stared at her, the Chinese lanterns draped behind him glinting off the gold of his uniform. “With Pratt?”
“Yes.” It was such a relief not to have to explain. “I think—I think they mean to take a boat. But they’ve only just left. We have time still. We can stop them.”
“But do we want to?” The prince touched a finger gently to Ellen’s cheek. “Perhaps this is as it was meant to be. Perhaps we should just let them go.”
“What?” Ellen gaped at him.
“Why not?” The prince cradled her face in his palms, looking at her so tenderly that it was all Ellen could do not to close her eyes and lean into that touch. “It might be . . . simpler that way. If she wants him that badly, let her have him.”
It was like a spell. But she couldn’t let herself fall prey to it. “No! I can’t leave Maybelle to that parasite. You know what he is. You know what he’ll do to her. He’s in debt to horrible people.” The prince was the one person in the world who would know exactly what she meant. Ellen looked up at him, letting all her fears show in her face. “He’s in debt to Dermot.”
That gave the prince pause. “Maybelle’s money will cancel the debt.”
“This time. What happens when he spends it all?” Ellen had seen what happened to the people who couldn’t pay. And their families. Dermot was a sentimentalist—to a point. That point ended when there was money owed. She put her hands on his arms, looking up at him pleadingly. “I can’t let Maybelle live like that. Please. We have to find her.”
“Miss Daniels!” John Sprague grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, whisky thick on his breath, blurring his words, if not his intent. “What are you doing back down here? You’re not needed anymore. Thought I made that clear.”
“No, sir, but—” Ellen stalled. She could imagine how damning the scene must have been.
“Go away. Didn’t hire you to dally with your bettersh. We’ll dishcush—discuss this tomorrow.” Turning his back on her, he squinted at the prince. “Where’sh Maybelle? You’re supposed to be opening the dancing together, not hanging about the music teacher.”
“Maybelle,” said the prince succinctly, “is not here. It appears that your sister has decided to elope with young Mr. Pratt.”
“Elope?” John Sprague’s face turned an unhealthy shade of crimson.
“I do believe that is the accepted term.” The prince inspected an imaginary piece of lint on the gold braid of his sleeve. “The ‘music teacher,’ as you have termed her, was expressing her concern for your sister’s well-being and begging me to aid in getting her back.”
“How . . . where . . . ,” Sprague blustered.
“She left a note,” said Ellen, thrusting it at him even though it was too dark to read it.
Sprague squinted at it and snapped, “Just tell me what it says, damn you.”
“Language,” said the prince warningly.
“Please.” Ellen stepped in between them. Time was wasting. All she could think of was Maybelle, innocent and trusting, going to Pratt like the proverbial lamb to slaughter. “It says they mean to sail away.”
“Sail? Away?” Sprague seemed to be having trouble with the concept.
“It’s all very romantic,” commented the prince. “If rather impractical.”
Ellen gave her beloved a quelling look. “We have to find her. Now. They can’t have been gone long, but every moment we waste . . .”
“Makes it harder to keep secret,” the prince finished for her. “The faster we find her, the less chance of a scandal.”
His words had a remarkably sobering effect on John Sprague. “Right. No scandal. Where d’we find ’em?”
That’s what Ellen had been wondering. She looked from one man to the other. “The only thing I can think of . . . there’s that path down to the water. He wasn’t at the party. If she slipped away through the gardens . . . but there’s no dock.”
“They wouldn’t need one. Not for this.” The prince was already moving, striding out of the loggia, not toward the garden, but to the working parts of the grounds, the greenhouses and the toolsheds. “There’s a metal hook driven into one of the rocks. It’s not large. But it would serve to tie up a small boat for the few minutes needed.”
Ellen hurried to catch up with him, Sprague puffing along behind her. “That’s all they need. A few minutes. Sebastiano—”
She hadn’t even realized she’d said his name until it came out.
The prince grabbed her hand in a brief, reassuring clasp. “We’ll catch them.”
“Damn right we will,” slurred John Sprague. Ellen had practically forgotten he was there. “What do you Italian chappies say? Andiamo?”
“I don’t,” said the prince, and plunged down the steep path, sure-footed in the dark.
There were no lanterns here, no torches. Ellen tried to keep up, but it was rough going, these stairs set in the cliff, and she didn’t know the terrain nearly as well as the prince. John Sprague was well behind them now, cursing as he staggered and slipped.
But there, there at the water’s edge—no, there wasn’t a boat, but there was a woman, balanced on the rocks, standing as far out as she dared, the pearls on her dress glimmering in the moonlight.
She looked like something out of legend, like one of the fairy tales Ellen’s mother used to tell her about princesses being lured by mermen.
Although, of course, this was nothing of the sort. Ellen felt a giddy surge of relief at seeing Maybelle safe and sound. No mermen, just a handsome scoundrel trying to marry an heiress for her money, not lure her into the depths. And they’d been in time. They’d been in time.
“Maybelle!” she called, and the girl turned, and in turning skidded on the slick rocks, treacherous with algae, catching herself just in time to keep from falling.
She was still, Ellen realized, wearing her impractical pearl-embroidered high-heeled slippers. What a thing to elope by boat in!
“Don’t come any closer!” the girl called, her voice wobbling on the words.
“Maybelle, it’s me! Ellen! I found your note.”
Maybelle shrank back. “But you weren’t supposed to. You can’t make me go back! I won’t. Frank was supposed to be here by now.”
“He’s not,” said the prince, and Ellen could have slapped him for it.
“You told him?”
“I had to,” Ellen said miserably, edging closer. “Please try to understand. I couldn’t let you run away with Pratt.”
“Because my brother is paying you?” Maybelle cast Ellen a look of outraged betrayal that cut Ellen to the bone. “I thought you were different. I trusted you.”
“I am—” Ellen looked helplessly over her shoulder at the prince, and back at Maybelle, speaking rapidly, trying to make her understand. Two yards of rough shingle and rock separated them. “If it had been anyone but Frank Pratt—I couldn’t let you marry him. He doesn’t love you, Maybelle. He’s only using you.”
Maybelle shrunk back as far as she dared. “What would you know about it?”
“I know the men he owes money to.” Ellen stood very still, looking her former pupil in the eye. “He’s a gambler, Maybelle. He’ll gamble your fortune away.”
“They told you that, didn’t they? They’re lying. My brother will say anything so long as I’ll marry him.” She pointed accusingly at Sebastiano, nearly oversetting herself in the process. “What did you do to him? What did you do to Frank? He should be here by now.”
“Nothing, nothing, I swear!” Ellen edged forward, terrified that Maybelle might fall. She could hear John Sprague behind her, crashing down the path, cursing as he landed heavily. That was all they needed. “Please come back, Maybelle. Please. You don’t have to marry the prince.”
Sprague muscled up beside her, incoherent with drink and rage. “What do you mean she doesn’t—”
Ellen drove an elbow into his side, knocking the wind out of him. She knew there’d be hell to pay, but he’d never intended to give her the money he owed her anyway. And it was Maybelle who mattered.
Keeping her eyes focused on Maybelle, Ellen took a tentative step forward, out onto the shingle. Ahead of her were rocks in a ragged jumble, as though a giant had got bored with his toys and flung them down. “I don’t care if you marry the prince or not. And I don’t know why Mr. Pratt isn’t here—but I do know he’s a wastrel and a scoundrel.”
Maybelle eyed her suspiciously, hugging her carpetbag to her chest. “Prunella told me you’d say that. She said you’d try to separate us by any means you could. Because he’s paying you. I thought you cared for me more than that. I thought you’d want me to be happy.”
It was the guileless cry of a little girl and it made Ellen’s heart ache. “I did! I do. And that’s why I’m telling you the truth.” There was no going back now. She stayed where she was, on the shingle, the Atlantic at her feet, choppy at midtide. “I lied about who I was, Maybelle. I wasn’t Annabelle Van Duyvil’s music teacher. I was the pianist at a music hall called the Hibernia.”
“What the—” she heard John Sprague bluster behind her. But she didn’t care about Sprague right now. She only cared about Maybelle.
“The Hibernia was run by a group of dangerous men. Ruthless men. These are the men Frank Pratt owes money. That’s why he wants you to elope with him. That’s why he couldn’t wait.”
Maybelle shook her head wildly, her ruby-and-diamond tiara askew over her high-piled golden hair. “No. No. He didn’t want to wait because he loves me, because he couldn’t bear another night without me.” She looked desperately over her shoulder, searching for a boat that wasn’t there. “Frank! Frank! Where are you?”
The prince stepped forward, beside Ellen. “Let me make this simple,” he said, not unkindly. “There is no need for these histrionics. You can marry Pratt or not as you choose. I release you from our betrothal.”
Maybelle paused, turning. “You do?” Something like hope showed on her face.
“The devil you will!” snarled John Sprague, horrified. “We had—we have—an arrangement! And don’t think I won’t hold you to it just because the little bitch is in heat! You—you stupid whore.”
He advanced on his sister, who shrank back from him, still clutching her carpetbag close against her chest.
“Mr. Sprague!” Ellen flung herself in front of him, trying to ward him off, but he shoved her aside, sending her stumbling back into the arms of the prince.
“You think you’re going to ruin what I took months to build? This isn’t about you, my girl.” Sprague stalked heavy-footed out onto the shingle. “You get yourself back here and you paste a smile on your face and you tell all those Vanderbilts and Astors just what a lucky girl you are.”
“No.” Maybelle glared at her brother, tottering on her pearl-embellished heels on her sliver of rock. “I won’t. I’m not.”
“Oh, won’t you?” said Sprague, and lunged for her.
“This is quite enough.” The prince grabbed at Sprague, but it was too late. Maybelle scooted instinctively back as her stepbrother grabbed for her, her heels sliding on the rock, and Ellen saw as she lost her balance. Her arms flung into the air, the carpetbag splashing into the water, as Maybelle flailed, her blue eyes wide with shock and fear.
She fell backward, hitting the water with an audible thwack.
“Maybelle!” screamed Ellen. “Maybelle!”
But the prince was already there, stripping out of his braided coat, diving down among the rocks. Ellen slid and skidded as far as she dared, crouching by the edge, peering into the water.
“Maybelle, you lousy whore,” shouted John Sprague. “Get up! Get out of there!”
The prince surfaced, spat out water, dove again. And again. And all the while, up above, the music played and the guests danced on.
It was, Ellen would hear later, a marvelous party. One for the scrapbooks.
But now she was leaning over the water, crying out as she saw something, as the prince surfaced again with his arms full of a sodden burden. It looked like a bundle of damp fabric streaming long trails of seaweed, only that wasn’t seaweed, that was hair, Maybelle’s hair, dark with seawater.
Half crying, half praying, Ellen leaned over and tried to grab Maybelle beneath the arms, helping the prince to drag her up onto the shingle, apologizing for hurting her all the while. The rocks, the rocks, they were so rough, and her dress was so heavy, so very heavy, weighed down with jewels and soaked in seawater.
“I’m so sorry,” Ellen muttered, as they dragged her clumsily, so clumsily. “I’m so sorry. Maybelle? Maybelle?”
But Maybelle was limp and still, her hair not golden anymore but dark with wet, falling starkly around her white face.
“Please,” Ellen begged, falling to her knees beside Maybelle. She was soaked, too, and hadn’t even noticed it, any more than she’d noticed the tears falling down her face. She chafed her pupil’s freezing hand. “Please, Maybelle. Please.”
The prince touched Ellen’s shoulder. Just that. One hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No!” Ellen hunkered down, hugging the other girl close, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure if it was Maybelle or her mother, just sleeping, just sleeping, tired with fever, but she wouldn’t wake up. “Maybelle.”
“Wake her up! Wake her up!” John Sprague shouted, jumping from one foot to the other. “Slap her awake!”
“It’s too late for that.” The prince’s voice was very cold as he faced the man who had wanted to be his brother-in-law. He sounded every inch the prince. “She will not wake again. Not in this life.”
“No. You’re lying—you’re—”
Ellen sat back on her heels, heedless with grief and rage. “You did this. You pushed her to it.”
John Sprague backed away, blustering, “You can’t blame this on me! It was an accident! I didn’t even touch her!” He stopped short, a look of pure horror crossing his face. “If she’s dead . . . all the money . . . there’s a cousin—”
Turning, he retched into the ocean, driven to a depth of emotion by the prospect of the loss of his fortune that mere death couldn’t produce.
He was disgusting. He was worse than disgusting. Maybelle had deserved better. From all of them.
Ellen struggled to her feet, insensible with anger and self-loathing. “You might have taken better care of her. You might have listened to her. You’d have your precious money, then. All she wanted was someone to love her.”
Sprague snarled at her. “Just like a woman. You’re all the same.” He paused, a strange expression crossing his face. “You’re all the same. You’re all the same. What if . . .”
He grabbed Ellen by the arm, so quickly she didn’t have time to protest.
“Get your hands off her, Sprague.” The prince’s arm was between them, his voice low and deadly.
Sprague was too elated to be afraid. “But don’t you see?” He jabbed a finger at Ellen’s hair. “Look at her! Look at the color of her hair. Give it a bit of curl . . . they’re almost the same height. Who’s to say who’s taller if they’re not next to each other. Maybelle’s a bit plumper . . . nothing some padding wouldn’t fix.”
Her employer was unhinged; he’d gone around the bend. Ellen yanked away. “I don’t understand. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Sprague rubbed his hands together in glee. “I’ll wager he does. No flies on the prince over there. Who’s to say who fell in the ocean tonight? Why shouldn’t Maybelle be alive? One blond chit is much the same as another.”
He was practically dancing now, jumping up and down with jubilation as his stepsister’s corpse lay limp in the moonlight.
“Maybelle wanted to elope? Let her elope. Only you’ll be Maybelle. You’ll do as well as any,” Sprague added, as though it were a matter of supreme indifference.
“What?” Ellen gaped at him, numb with cold and grief.
“Not with Pratt, you ninny. With the prince. Maybelle runs off with her intended on her betrothal night. The papers will lap it up. And why shouldn’t we? That way the money stays where it’s meant to be. And you get to be a princess, you lucky slut,” he added, as an afterthought. “No one in Italy’s ever met her. One blond girl is as good as another.”
“No,” said the prince.
“Whaddya mean, no? It’s the perfect solution. Don’t think I haven’t seen you panting after her. This way you get ’er. And Maybelle’s money, too. Unless you didn’t really want ’er. But Maybelle’s money, that’s the price you pay. Same terms as last time. Jus’ a diff’rent Maybelle.”
Ellen couldn’t listen to this. She looked around frantically, up the cliff, at the house alight with merriment. “We need to get help.”
“What help? She’s dead,” said John Sprague brutally, moving to cut Ellen off. “No helping her. But we can help ourselves. Just us three. Keep it in the family.”
“It’s insane.” Ellen looked to the prince for help. “Insane. Anyone would know I wasn’t Maybelle. Anyone who had ever met her.”
“You would never be able to come back,” said the prince thoughtfully. “Not to Newport. Not to America. But if you were to come to Italy . . . if you were to live your whole life abroad, an exile . . . who would there be to know?”
“Someone!” said Ellen hysterically. Maybelle’s body was lying right there. They were talking about her as if she were nothing, as if the person she had been hadn’t mattered at all. “People move about, you know! They take steamers! They visit! You’re not—you’re not considering this, are you?”
How could he? How could either of them? It made her sick to her stomach. All she wanted to do was turn back the clock and make it yesterday, put Maybelle back on her settee with her apple and her book.
“Ellen.” The prince gently slipped an arm around her, moving her away from Sprague. “Ellen. I find that poor excuse for a man as repugnant as you. But for once in his miserable life . . . there is something to what he says.”
Something. Something horrifying.
Ellen blinked up at the prince, at her love, feeling utterly adrift. “I couldn’t—we couldn’t—how could we betray her like that?”
The prince squeezed her hands, warming them. “She’s dead. There’s no hurting her anymore. As much as I hate to agree with that creature about anything . . . he’s not entirely wrong.”
“Of course, I’m not wrong,” sputtered John Sprague. “If you two lovebirds—”
“Hold your tongue!” the prince snapped. He smoothed the tears off Ellen’s cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “My love. We can have what we never thought we would. We can be together.”
Ellen choked on a sob. “Do you need your roof fixed that badly?”
“It’s not the money.” The prince held her face between his palms, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I can find another heiress. I could find ten. You know that. But I could never find another you. Not in all the wide world. Having found you, I find myself reluctant to lose you.”
“This is all very charming,” blustered John Sprague, hopping with impatience, “but someone might come along at any moment, and—”
“Shut up,” snapped the prince, never taking his eyes from Ellen. His eyes were very bright in the moonlight, green as a cat’s. “Tell me you feel otherwise. Tell me you want nothing to do with me. And I’ll cry out to the revelers above and release you.”
Ellen squeezed her eyes shut hard. See no evil, hear no evil. “It’s a snare from the devil. Stealing her life.”
“Giving her new life.” Ellen opened her eyes and saw the prince looking down at her. Not a prince but a man. A man used to looking at the more unpleasant aspects of life. “My love, she’s gone. Whatever happens now, there’s no going back.”
Ellen felt sick. The worst of it was that it was all true. “She should be buried properly,” she said stubbornly. “People should mourn her.”
“Who? Prunella Schuyler? Frank Pratt? There was only one person in the world who cared enough about Maybelle Sprague to mourn. And I don’t mean that cretin.” The prince jerked his thumb back at John Sprague. “You’re the only one who truly cared for her. Of all the world, who do you think she would most want to benefit from her fortune?”
Ellen forced herself to look at Maybelle, to really look at her. There was no Maybelle there anymore. Just bones in a ball gown. Maybelle’s cameo pinned to a breast that would never stir with breath again. “It’s blood money.”
“All money is blood money. My family is awash in it.” The prince pressed his forehead against hers, so there was nothing but the two of them, his hands cupping her face. “The real question is: Do you want to marry me? You would never be able to go back to America again, never be among your own people.”
She thought of her mother, still and cold. Her siblings, one after the other. Her father. “I have no people.”
“You have me.” He leaned his forehead against hers and for a moment, Ellen let herself lean into him, breathing in the familiar scent of him, orange and bergamot and salt water. “My love, I know these are not the circumstances either of us would have wished. But Fortune works in strange ways. It doesn’t do to shun her gifts.”
She could feel the tears building again, clogging the back of her throat. Tears for Maybelle, who would never grow up, never love, never marry. For the life Ellen was taking from her. She couldn’t believe she was considering this. But she was. “I’m not sure I would call this a gift.”
“Call it a chance, then.” Stepping back, the prince lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it. “Maybelle would want you to be happy.”
He was right. Maybelle, of all people, would only have wanted a happy ending. Even if it wasn’t her own. Ellen could stay and spend her life hiding from Dermot’s men. Or she could go and be with the man she loved. “I hate that it’s at the expense of her death.”
Sebastiano squeezed her hand. “Let her death mean something, then. Honor her with your living. Live the life she might have lived. With me.”
Bored by this display of irrelevant affection, John Sprague knelt down to try to tug a ruby bracelet off Maybelle’s wrist.
“Stop! Leave it!” Ellen flew at Sprague, beside herself with guilt and grief. She stopped just short of touching him, her hands curled into fists at her sides, her nails biting into her palms. “Don’t you dare take her jewels off her. It’s bad enough to steal her life; I won’t let you rob her corpse as well.”
“You heard her, Sprague,” said the prince, and it was his voice Sprague listened to, the voice of hundreds of years of absolute rule.
Sprague cast one last reluctant look at the rubies, but he obeyed all the same, rising slowly to his feet. “Does that mean we have a deal?” he demanded. “I leave the rubies. You take the prince.”
One last chance. One last chance to do the right thing, to say no.
Ellen looked from Sprague, to Maybelle, to the prince. “Yes.”