Page 66 of A Queen's Match

“You shouldn’t have asked him that,” Agnes muttered.

May tensed. “Excuse me?”

“You’re a future queen. You shouldn’t have asked permission from Mr.Curtis.Heworks foryou,” Agnes explained. “Next time you don’t sayWould you mind; you just inform him what you are doing. He will accommodate you.”

May suspected that Agnes was right, but she didn’t wantto admit it. “Did you just come here to criticize me, or did you have something you wanted to discuss?”

“I thought you might want to know that it’s missing,” Agnes said testily.

“What’s missing?”

“The letter from Laurent, of course! The one we blackmailed Hélène with!”

“Youblackmailed Hélène,” May corrected her. “Notwe.I had no part in it.”

“Oh, please.” Agnes waved away May’s protest. “You were more than content to benefit from my blackmail. From what I can see, you’re still benefiting from it,” she added with a meaningful glance around the store.

Perhaps Maywasequally culpable in the blackmail. She could have told Hélène the truth about the letter. There had been a moment, last fall, when she thought that she and Hélène understood each other—a tentative heartbeat of friendship that could have become something more.

Instead May had let Hélène go on thinking she was blackmailed, ensuring that the French princess hated her.

“A maidservant named Annie stole the letter,” Agnes was saying, her voice tight. “She quit, and then a few days later I opened the box where I had kept it, and the letter was missing!”

“She must be working with Hélène.” Briefly May recounted what had happened at Osborne, how she’d caught Hélène snooping through her things.

Agnes’s face fell. “If Hélène has it, she might feel brave enough to take Eddy back from you. That letter was our insurance policy, our proof. Without it, all you have is slander.”

“You didn’t hear? Hélène and Eddy are done. She’s been flirting outrageously with Nicholas, the Tsarevich of Russia.” May sighed. “She stole the letter back because she didn’t want me to blackmail her a second time, not when she’s about to get engaged to a Romanov.”

Agnes stared at May. “Hélène has moved on toNicholas?”

“They aren’t formally engaged yet, but I’m sure it will be announced soon.”

“You’re saying that I had a letter in my possession, a highly personal letter incriminating thefuture tsarinaof Russia—and it’s out of my grasp?” Agnes seemed outraged.

“I should think that it was enough to have one future queen in your pocket,” May snapped.

“Yes, but I should prefer to call on favors from two.”

Agnes said it so matter-of-factly, without an ounce of compunction, that May huffed out a laugh. “You’ll never change, will you?”

“I hope not. And I hope you don’t, either,” Agnes said resolutely. “I know you won’t believe me, May, but I really have been rooting for you this whole time. I’ll let you get back to your trousseau,” she added, with a fond glance toward the fitting rooms. “I just wanted to warn you about the letter in case it was a problem. You know, for old times’ sake.”

May must have been getting soft after that conversation with her mother, because to her own surprise she asked Agnes, “Would you like to stay?”

Agnes smiled broadly. “I would love that.”

As they headed back toward the private fitting rooms, they heard a shocked gasp from Lady Churchill, followed by a swiftshhfrom Lady Ely.

May and Agnes exchanged a wordless glance, then both slowed their steps, listening.

“It is quite scandalous behavior for a granddaughter of Her Majesty,” Lady Ely hissed. “And with the Crown Prince of Romania!”

“That girl has thrown away her future,” Lady Churchill agreed. “She could have been the second-highest-ranked woman in England!”

“Poor George…”

May stepped into the sitting room with deliberate calm, though her pulse was racing wildly. The two ladies-in-waiting immediately cut off their whispers as she appeared, which only confirmed her suspicions.