Page 211 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Why is she here?” Ren rasped. He was ashamed, not at being caught, but that Harriette had just explained to him why they couldn’t do as they wished, and he had nevertheless pawed her like an eager puppy. He couldn’t hide the betraying bulge in his breeches as he stepped away, and Princess looked her fill, with an approving smile.
“Respectability, you know,” Princess answered. “You must be chaperoned now that Hari’s betrothed. No more playing rantum scantum.”
Ren stared, not comprehending the term. She raised a brow and made an illustrative gesture. “The blanket hornpipe? Two-handed put? Amorous congress?”
“Not with you breaking in on us in full sail, no.” Harriette rolled off the stool and shook out her skirts, then walked over to the tea tray. Ren took small satisfaction in noting her gait wobbled slightly. She wasn’t able to shake off the drugging effects of their embrace that quickly.
He knew anything he tried to say would emerge mangled, so Ren kept his mouth shut and merely glowered at Princess. “You’ll thank me when Fritz doesn’t carve out your heart,” she advised him.
“Franz Karl,” Harriette said. She cut a scone and heaped it with cream.
“Every German is Fritz.” Princess sniffed.
“Happens this one calls himself Prussian,” Harriette replied.
Him. Harriette’s affianced. Ren retreated to the sitting nook and his marble pillar. His boot scraped along the floor before he caught himself and thought about his gait. Princess glanced his way but made no comment. She merely accepted the dish of tea and the piled-high scone Harriette gave her, then glided overto a draped couch standing against a window on the sculptor’s side of the room, where she seated herself and dove into her refreshments with evident enjoyment.
“The King—king—kingdom of Galicia and Wodo—Lodomeria,” Ren managed, remembering their recent introduction. “Another takeover engineered by Fwed—Frederick, King of P-Prussia, as I understand. Are you fa—from the same region, then?”
Ren glared at Princess, blaming her for the way his tongue swelled and flailed in his mouth. She put him off the ease he felt with Harriette, made all his self-consciousness rise to the surface. He hated hearing his own voice, his stuttering. He fully expected her to look at him with the pity, scorn, or horror he was used to seeing.
Princess licked her fingers and gave him a level look. “Galicia is a crownland of the Hapsburg monarchy now,” she said. “A consequence of Frederick the Great parceling out parts of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania—which is not his to give, I might add, but he thought to placate Austria and keep Russia off his borders. No doubt the vultures will pluck poor Poland down to her bones.”
“So you are P-Polish royalty then,” Ren said carefully.
“How lovely for me,” Princess said, enjoying her cream.
“And Rhette is Prussian nobility.”
“Not Prussian,” Harriette said sharply, moving his way with a dish of tea and a generously creamed scone. “Silesian.”
“Silesia was part of Poland in the Middle Ages, under Bohemian rule,” Princess said around a mouthful of scone. “Before the Hapsburgs scooped it into their great gaping maw and turned it into a backwater.”
“We are more Slav than German.” Harriette deposited his refreshments on Ren’s pillar and turned back to her stool. “We have our own language and culture.”
“I always thought you and your mother were speaking German to each other,” Ren said in surprise. The cream was delicious, the scone melting and yet tart. The treat helped remedy somewhat for Harriette’s being forcibly removed from his arms.
“It’s more like Polish,” Harriette said. “But a language proper, not a dialect.”
“Say something,” Ren prompted.
She searched about for her porte crayon and her sketchbook. When she settled herself on her stool, her look held a warmth that curled into his belly, dissolving the cream. He didn’t understand a word of what followed, but it wasn’t German.
Princess raised her eyebrows.
“What did you say?” Ren asked.
“I said it will be interesting to see where Frederick decides to throw his weight in the matter of the revolt in the American colonies,” Harriette said. “France will aid the colonists because they love to antagonize Britain. But Britain and Prussia were allies, at least until the Seven Years’ War.”
“Oh, isthatwhat you said?” Princess murmured.
Harriette shot her a defiant look, and Ren decided not to press the issue. Let her have her small lie, if she were honest with him otherwise.
“So it will help when you go-go back. If you know—if you know the language.” He tried his best to sound casual, offhand. As if he were merely a friend remarking on her future plans. The subject of her work, the patron who had commissioned a painting for quite a hefty fee, as it were. Not the man who would drop to his knees and beg her to stay with him, if his crippled leg would allow such a gesture.
“My aunt has made sure I kept it. Now I understand why. She knew of the betrothal all along.” She attacked her paper with long, savage lines.
“And she never told you?” Surprise made the words slip out without a catch.
