Princess Of The Silver Woods Part 4

"Stay away from her," Oliver said, trying to sound dangerous and not terrified.

Another cackling laugh. The shadow reached out and put its hand into Oliver's chest. A sheath of ice instantly covered his heart, and then the shadow squeezed. Oliver gasped as intense pain flared in his chest, streaking through his entire body. He tried to step back but found that he couldn't move so much as an eyelid.

"She is not for you," the shadow said in a low, harsh voice. "She is for us. All of them are for us."

"No," Oliver gasped out.

"Yes," the shadow snarled.

Then it pulled its hand back. Oliver fell to his knees, choking for air.

"What are you?"

But the shadow was gone.

Oliver struggled back to his feet, clutching his chest in one hand. He looked around, but he was alone in the garden now. Through Petunia's window he could still hear faint cries.

No one in the house seemed to have been roused at all. How was it possible that these creatures could have attacked the house and he was the only witness? Hadn't even her maid heard her screaming and come to see if she was all right?

Oliver crept closer to the house, stopping behind a large azalea. Squinting at the darkness of her window, he saw a figure in white. It was Petunia. She pushed the curtains aside and stood there for a few heartbeats, then closed them with a jerk.

"There," Oliver muttered to himself. "She's fine. Whatever those things were, they're gone. And there's nothing I can do to help her, anyway."

But that was a lie, and Oliver knew it. He had to help her, somehow. Something or someone had set out to harm Petunia. Someone far more wicked than himself, with his coach robbing and his botched abduction of the princess.

And yet, what could he do to help? The first step would be getting out of the garden and back to the old hall. His mother might know more and be able to help him decide what to do from there. But in the back of his head, Oliver was already entertaining a terrible thought.

It was time for him to go to Bruch. And King Gregor.

Guest.

Dearest Papa, I have arrived safe and sound at the grand d.u.c.h.ess's manor. Did you know that the estate used to be the seat of an earldom? There appears to be hard feelings among the local folk over this incident, and I wondered if you were aware.

Petunia stopped and looked over the beginning of her letter. Should she start out that bluntly? Perhaps she should wait and add a little postscript about the earldom. Jumping in like that was something Poppy would do, but Petunia was normally more circ.u.mspect.

She left the lines there anyway.

As you have no doubt heard, I disappeared shortly after the coach was smashed. I can a.s.sure you that I am quite safe. I wandered too far into the woods and got lost. A kindly woodcutter and his family took me in for the night, and then delivered me to the gates of the estate today. The grand d.u.c.h.ess, dear soul, was quite beside herself, thinking that I had come to harm. I was quick to rea.s.sure her, and all is well here. How do you and my sisters get on?

With love, your daughter, Petunia There. She had wanted to write her father yesterday when she'd first arrived at the estate, but her arrival at the estate had been so inauspicious that it had taken the whole day to get settled.

And then the nightmares had been so real and so terrible that she had woken up at the open window, screaming into the night. She had dreamed that there were shadowy figures in the garden calling her name, and even now she wasn't sure that it had been a dream. She could remember the last time that Kestilan and his brothers had ventured out of the Kingdom Under Stone, taking on shadowy forms in the night. Petunia had studied the gardens carefully from her window, but she had seen only moonlight on the winter-dead lawns.

Petunia had slept late and then found herself being fluttered about by maids attempting to find clothes for her from the wardrobes at the estate. Her own trunks had gone back to Bruch with the damaged coach, and so gowns left behind by the grand d.u.c.h.ess's granddaughters were brought in and tried on Petunia. Before she knew it, it was time to bathe for her first formal dinner with the grand d.u.c.h.ess, and she still hadn't written to her father. After she had done so, leaving the remarks about Oliver's earldom as they were, she decided to write her brother-in-law Galen in the morning.

She wondered what Galen would think of Oliver's situation. Galen was nothing if not practical, and he had a keen understanding of politics, having seen it from both sides. Born a commoner and having served as a foot soldier in the war, he gave King Gregor unique advice, but it was always "worth its weight in gold" as her father was quick to tell anyone who doubted.

But for now Petunia stretched and cast an eye over her shoulder. There was rustling from her dressing room, where a maid was preparing a bath for her. Tonight she would be having dinner with the grand d.u.c.h.ess and Prince Grigori, and she was surprised at how nervous she felt. It was not just because of Prince Grigori, though the prince was even more handsome than she remembered. Petunia had forgotten how imposing the grand d.u.c.h.ess was. That lady, still beautiful despite her years, was more regal than many a queen, and Petunia found herself quite tongue-tied by the d.u.c.h.ess's gracious ways.

"Are you ready, Your Highness?" The maid, Olga, popped out of the dressing room, startling Petunia.

"What? Oh, yes." Petunia folded up her letter and put it in an envelope, hastily pressing her seal to the wax and smearing it badly. She sighed as she handed it to the maid. "Please send this immediately."

"Of course, Your Highness." Olga took the letter and scurried out.

Petunia struggled out of her gown. Her own maid, Maria, had apparently insisted on walking back toward Bruch with the coachman to get help.

One of Petunia's guards had gone to the grand d.u.c.h.ess to tell her what had happened, but the others had headed back to Bruch with the limping horses and ruined coach. The grand d.u.c.h.ess had sent out servants to search when Petunia did not arrive on schedule, and it was a miracle, Petunia thought, that she and Oliver had not run into them. But then, Oliver was very good at eluding people in the forest.

Petunia was down to her petticoats and stockings when Olga came back. The maid simply walked into the room, nearly causing Petunia to fall over as she rolled down one of her stockings. At the palace in Bruch, maids always knocked, but Olga seemed to think nothing of flitting in and out without a sound. Petunia had been startled by her at least three times since she had arrived, and for a moment she contemplated making the girl wear a bell.

"Oh, Your Highness! Allow me!" Olga scurried over and started to roll down Petunia's stockings.

This was the sort of thing that Petunia had always done herself, and she knew she was blus.h.i.+ng. Olga set her stockings aside and unfastened Petunia's petticoats, then her corset. She was reaching for the hem of Petunia's camisole when Petunia caught Olga's hands.

"Thank you, I'll take care of that," Petunia said firmly.

"But, Your Highness-" Olga began, and Petunia interrupted her.

"I prefer to do this myself. Also, I bathe alone," she said. "There are towels and soap laid out?"

Olga nodded, looking distressed.

"Thank you. I'll ring when I need you to help me dress," Petunia said, though she privately resolved to see how far she could get without any a.s.sistance. There was something so annoyingly obsequious about Olga. "I will be fine," Petunia a.s.sured her.

Once the door closed behind Olga, Petunia fled to the bath. She was convinced that the maid would come creeping back without being summoned, and she hated the thought of having her back forcibly scrubbed.

Petunia took a very short bath and was into her underthings and trying to get her corset on straight when Olga suddenly appeared at her elbow. The maid, who was barely taller than Petunia and probably no more than a pair of years older, frowned and started to scold in her accented Westfalian.

"I knew it! I knew you would not ring for me! And now you are all in a muddle!"

Her movements brisk, Olga got Petunia's corset sorted out, then her petticoats. She helped Petunia into an evening gown that the grand d.u.c.h.ess's granddaughter, Princess Nastasya, had left behind after her last visit. Nastasya's gowns fit Petunia the best, and there was the added benefit that she was very vain and only wore a gown once, which meant that the wardrobes were full of Nastasya's gowns.

She was also taller than Petunia, though slightly smaller in the bust. Olga did the best she could to adjust the gown, which was apricot satin with straw-colored lace, but Petunia would have to keep the skirts lifted as she walked and be very careful about bending or reaching for anything. Not that she was complaining about the way the bodice fitted, exactly. It wasn't unflattering ... and her father wasn't here to object.

"I'll start fixing the hem of a gown for tomorrow immediately," Olga said as she fixed Petunia's hair. "There's a blue silk with only two flounces that should be easy to alter."

"Thank you," Petunia said with genuine relief. She didn't particularly enjoy feeling like a midget, as Jonquil always called her.

As Petunia left her room to go to dinner, she was still preoccupied with wondering whether Nastasya would care if Petunia took some of her gowns. So much so that she didn't see Prince Grigori until she stepped on a trailing hem and fell down the last four steps into his arms.

"Goodness, Princess Petunia!" The prince held her for a moment before setting her on her feet. "Must we keep meeting in these dire circ.u.mstances?" He smiled down at her.

Petunia laughed uneasily and disentangled herself. She did her best to make the apricot satin pool around her feet in a becoming way. She wished that the prince hadn't reminded her of how he'd nearly run her down on his horse the day before, and then hustled her rather roughly onto the estate while his men looked for Oliver, despite her protests that he was just a shepherd who had helped her. In the dazzle of Prince Grigori's smile it was easy to forget all that, but less so when he brought it up.

To her relief he began to talk of pleasantries like the sort of dishes she could expect from his grandmother's celebrated Russakan chef. Grigori led her into the dining room, where the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Volenskaya kissed Petunia on the cheek and told her that the apricot gown was so ravis.h.i.+ng that she should keep it, making Petunia feel even better.

And once dinner was served, Petunia was in heaven. Not only was the food divine-the very best dishes that she remembered from Russaka, served exquisitely on gold-edged plates-but the only diners were herself, Prince Grigori, and the grand d.u.c.h.ess. She had been worried that the grand d.u.c.h.ess might have invited other young people and that Petunia would have to vie for the attention of the d.u.c.h.ess and her grandson. But it was only the three of them, so she basked in their compliments and listened with fascination as the grand d.u.c.h.ess talked of her youth in the dark forests of Russaka.

The only awkward moment came when Prince Grigori asked what Petunia had been doing in the company of one of the two-legged wolves he was hunting for her father.

"I beg your pardon?" Petunia tilted her head to one side, affecting confusion. "A wolf? That man who pushed me out of the way? I thought you said he was a gypsy."

"A gypsy?" Prince Grigori frowned. "You said he was a shepherd. And did you not see the mask he wore?"

"Actually, no," Petunia said. "He came and went so quickly that I never got a proper look at him at all."

"But you were held at gunpoint by those men just the day before," Prince Grigori said. "Did you not even glimpse the horrible snout of that mask coming over your shoulder?"

Petunia feigned a shudder and hoped that it looked real. "I didn't ... I suppose I was just so frightened. It was all happening so fast, and I-" She stopped herself just in time from saying that she was afraid that the prince was going to slash her face with his hunting whip. Looking back, she was embarra.s.sed that she could have ever thought such a thing of Grigori. "I suppose I just wasn't expecting one of them to leap out of nowhere and save me. At first I thought it was the kindly woodcutter who had taken me most of the way to your estate, ma'am." She nodded at the grand d.u.c.h.ess, who was watching the exchange with an expression of displeasure.

"And why did this helpful woodcutter not bring you all the way to my gates?" The grand d.u.c.h.ess raised one eyebrow, still dark despite her age, though Petunia rather wondered if that was cosmetic rather than natural.

"I begged him not to," Petunia replied promptly, glad to be able to use some of the truth. "He had taken me so far already, I felt guilty making him go all the way to the gates with me, as though I were a child. He ... he was a.n.a.lousian, you see," she invented. "So once we could see the walls, and he told me that the gates were just around the bend, I urged him to return to his family. He had been gone only a few minutes, which is why at first I thought it was he who had pushed me off the road. But when you said gypsies, Your Highness"-and now a nod at Prince Grigori, who was still looking skeptical-"I was quite panic-stricken and wanted nothing more than to get away, so I didn't look behind me at all."

"I see," Prince Grigori said, looking only slightly mollified.

Petunia relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the meal. She also enjoyed having Prince Grigori walk her to the door of her bedchamber afterward and kiss her hand as he bade her good night. Really, it was hard to believe that he was the same person on the black horse she had been afraid of the day before. He was all easy smiles and gallant words, just as he had been in Russaka. And now that she was sixteen, the age difference between them seemed hardly to matter.

Giving a happy sigh, she went in to be undressed by Olga and tucked into bed, where she hoped to dream of dancing in the arms of Prince Grigori. The one disappointment in being the grand d.u.c.h.ess's only guest was that there would be no excuse to hold a ball.

She drifted off with a smile that was soon chased from her lips. Rather than dreaming of Grigori, she dreamed that Kestilan and his surviving brothers crawled up the wall to her bedroom window again. They filled her dreams with whispers, whispers of how she and her sisters would be their brides before the moon was full.

Witness.

When Oliver arrived home the next morning, Lady Emily was standing in the doorway of the old hall, looking pale and drawn. Her eyes searched her son for any sign of injury.

"I'm fine, but I wanted to make certain that Petunia was all right," he said in a low voice.

His mother saw several people sidling closer with curious faces, so she smiled and threw up her hands theatrically. "Never worry me like that again," she scolded. She took Oliver's arm. "Come have something to eat; you must be famished."

Oliver let his mother lead him into the room on the upper gallery of the old hall, where they dined. He slumped in one of the chairs while she sent for food and waited until someone had brought him roasted chicken and potatoes. When they were alone once more, and after Oliver had bitten into the largest potato and burnt his tongue in the process, he began to speak. He told his mother everything that had happened from Petunia's nearly being run down by Prince Grigori's horse to the realization that it was the grand d.u.c.h.ess's grandson who was tracking him and his men to hiding in the old hothouse.

As he related each part of the story, his mother's face grew whiter and whiter until he feared she might faint. He reached out a hand to her.

"It's all right, Mother. But ... what does this all mean?"

"I don't know," Lady Emily admitted. "But I've told you how those poor girls were accused of witchcraft. Their governess was nearly put to death for teaching it to them."

"Do you think they were guilty?"

"I knew Anne," his mother said, shaking her head. "She is no more a witch than I am. But something was causing all that horror at the palace: the worn-out dancing slippers and the dead princes, you've heard about that as well."

"Of course." Oliver drummed on the table and stopped himself with an effort, forcing down a bite of the cooled potatoes.

Of course. The situation with the worn-out dancing slippers was what had prevented his mother from getting him his rights as an earl after the death of his father in the war. Not that he blamed her. He blamed King Gregor. He supposed he could blame Petunia, too, but she would only have been five or six years old, so the very idea was ludicrous. And it was very hard to blame Petunia for anything after hearing her crying out in the night and seeing her menaced by creatures made of shadow.

"There's something to all this," his mother went on. "There's some connection between the grand d.u.c.h.ess and the earlier tragedies. I would stake my life on it."

"But what?" Oliver shook his head, tearing off a hunk of bread to sop up the gravy. "Because the grand d.u.c.h.ess is one of the Nine Daughters of Russaka? What would that have to do with worn-out dancing slippers?" He tried not to sound derisive. He really did want his mother's opinions on the matter, but if she started talking about fairy stories again ...

"The Nine Daughters of Russaka bore the sons of the King Under Stone," his mother said primly. "But no one has ever said whether the Nine Daughters had any further contact with the King Under Stone, or the babies. Did they ever see their sons again?" His mother looked at him archly.

Oliver began to think. His mother believed that this had really happened. And heaven knew that he had seen some strange sights, even before last night. The forest was full of odd creatures, mysterious lights-and Karl's wife claimed to have found a dragon's lair while gathering mushrooms one day. What if the King Under Stone was real? What if he had fathered nine sons with the Russakan princesses, and one of those princesses was now the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Volenskaya? Was she allowed to visit her son? Did the King Under Stone have a hold over her?

"Let's say that the grand d.u.c.h.ess did have a child of the King Under Stone's," Oliver said. "Where is the child now? Is it human?"

"Exactly," his mother said, looking uneasy. "No one knows. And what all this has to do with Petunia and her sisters, I don't know, either. But I do know that something strange is happening around those girls again."

"He fathered nine sons with nine sisters in Russaka," Oliver said, convulsively swallowing the last bite of chicken with a dry throat. "But who's to say he doesn't have more? And if the king of Westfalin has twelve daughters ... whose suitors kept being killed ..." He shook his head, dismissing the idea. "It's all too strange, and we just don't know enough," he said.

His mother put both hands to her mouth, face chalky white. "I just hope the King Under Stone doesn't see you as a potential suitor," she said in a strangled voice.

Oliver laughed bitterly. "Please, Mother, I'm not even a real earl."

Chilled.

Must this window be open? It's freezing!"

Petunia slammed her window shut yet again, wincing at the chill wind that bit into her borrowed nightgown. It seemed that the Princess Nastasya cared more about the draping of fine muslin and cobweb lace than catching her death of cold-and the matching dressing gown was hardly any warmer. It also appeared that Olga was attempting to kill Petunia by keeping her window open all night.

When Petunia had awakened from her nightmare, there had been cold air and mist pouring into the room through the open window. But no sooner had she shut it than Olga had peeped into the room to see if she was all right, and immediately bustled over to open the window again, saying that the "brisk" air was good for the complexion. Petunia's demands that the maid leave the window shut fell on deaf ears, so between skirmishes in the window war she had s.n.a.t.c.hed little sleep.

And now she wanted very much to write to Rose and Galen about her latest nightmares, but Olga insisted on dressing her for breakfast at once. Petunia was still not certain that she was only dreaming the shadowy figures in the garden and needed to tell her sisters. The shadowy figures looked different, older, and those princes who had died when she and her sisters had escaped the Kingdom Under Stone did not appear, which made all too convincing an argument that what she was seeing, both in the gardens and in her dreams, was real.

But she couldn't write the letter with Olga fussing over her, pulling up Petunia's stockings, chivvying her into a freshly altered gown. Though Petunia had to admit that Olga had done a wonderful job-the gown fit as though it had been made for Petunia, and she determined at once to keep it. Then there was her hair to be done up and her face to be powdered and rouged, even though King Gregor did not approve of such things. But her father was not here, Petunia reasoned, studying the effect in the mirror.

"Very nice," she complimented Olga, who glowed at the praise. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really must write a letter to my sister."

"Oh, no, Your Highness!" Olga hustled her off the dressingtable stool and toward the door. "You must go downstairs at once! They'll be waiting for you in the breakfast room! I'll show you myself."