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W hen Constantia reached the bottom of the stairs, she realized how much more intense the storm had grown. The wind wailed eerily through the anterooms; Alistair must have left the door leading from the cloisters open. But if so, it did not let in any light. All around her was in utter blackness. She wished for the lamp she had left burning upstairs, though she knew it would not have lasted long against these wintry blasts.

Leaving Rylemoor was by far the most difficult choice she had ever made, and the prospect of stepping out into the storm made her all the more reluctant. But if she hesitated, she would lose her nerve. If she hesitated, she would only be making herself, Alistair, and the entire Haythorne family more miserable in the end.

So, she hitched her valise higher on her hip, dragged in a determined breath, and took a step toward the door.

The darkness was disorienting. For a moment, she feared she had turned the wrong way and was walking deeper into the abbey, where the building’s decay posed greater dangers. She groped blindly until her gloved hand encountered cold, damp stone. A wall. The wall that divided the anterooms from the ruined church. If she walked along it, keeping it to her right, it would lead her to the door.

She had taken only a few shuffling steps when she became aware of another sound, barely audible beneath the storm. Scuffling noises. A deeper chill, one not caused by the weather, shuddered through her. Rats.

But rats wouldn’t make that much noise, would they? Some larger animal, then. Something that had been driven to take shelter from the storm. She reminded herself that, whatever sort of creature it was, it was no doubt more reluctant to encounter her in the dark than she was to encounter it.

She found herself probing every step with her toe before setting down her foot, thinking not just of that frightened animal somewhere in the darkness but also the fallen stones and slick spots along her way. If she stumbled and fell, hit her head...if Alistair found her injured and carried her to warmth and shelter...she knew she would never find the strength to leave again.

Not much farther now. She thought she could detect a slight lessening of the gloom ahead of her, in the arched shape of the doorway. Soon she would be out in the open. In the rain and wind and darkness. Surrounded by treacherous moor.

Nothing a stranger in his right mind—or even out of it—would try to cross this time of year.

No, no, she scolded her fear, driving back the memory of Alistair’s voice and replacing it with her own. I have a plan. Across the courtyard to the drive. Follow the drive back to the main road. Main road to the village. As long as she stayed on the beaten path, she was unlikely to stumble into a bog.

Perhaps the wild creature who had taken shelter in the abbey had the right idea. It was making its way deeper into the building, away from the door. She strained to listen, to pick out the sounds of its approach beneath the noise of the storm. Its shuffling, tentative steps seemed to mirror her own.

And then, from very near, a muffled thump . As if whatever it was had struck a stone with its foot.

Did animals stub their toes?

Well, if so, they surely didn’t mutter oaths afterward.

Constantia’s scream strangled in her throat when the creature—a man—reached out and grabbed her. He was speaking to her, she thought, but the blood pounding between her ears made such a roar that she couldn’t pick out the words. His grip was implacable, trapping the arm in which she held her valise so she could not use it as a weapon. Her other wrist was still too weak for her to defend herself with it. And if she tried to kick him, she was as likely to strike stone and break her foot instead.

He was saying the same thing over and over in a gravelly voice, and it sounded very much like “At last, at last.” After all these years of hiding and running, to be found out here? To lose the battle for her freedom in the one place she so desperately did not want to leave? No, she had to fight, had to get away from this craggy-faced mountain of a man, had to—why could she see his features now? Was the storm lessening? Where did the light come from?

Then, like a vision, Alistair appeared, lamp in one hand and jagged stone in the other, arms raised high, his expression fierce and bloodthirsty, ready to knock her assailant’s brains from his head.

Relief poured into her. She was safe. He had saved her. Again. And that knowledge gave her the strength to cry out, “Wait!”

A half second too late, perhaps. But Alistair hesitated, and the shift in momentum made the blow more glancing than it otherwise would have been. Her assailant’s eyes grew wide with surprise just before he tumbled to the floor, nearly pulling her down with him.

Alistair snatched her up before she hit the ground and gathered her to his chest. The lamp fell from his hand, struck stone, and guttered, leaving them in darkness again. “Constantia!” His hands raced over her head, her back. The valise slipped from her numb fingers and landed beside her with a thud . “Are you harmed? Did he hurt you? Good God! Why did you tell me to wait?” he murmured against her hair, and she could feel his mouth tremble. “When I saw the fear in your face, I wanted to kill him.”

“I know. I know you did. But first, I want answers. I want to know who he is.” She tipped her head back to look up, though Alistair’s features were nothing more than a pale blur against the dark. “I want to know why.”

A groan from the floor near their feet made it clear that the man was not dead. “We may not have much time before he rouses,” Alistair said, setting her back on her heels. “Can you fetch a candle?” She heard the whisper of cloth. “I’ll tie his hands.”

Once more, she felt along the damp wall to the staircase and hurried up. Thanks to the windows, the darkness in the studio was not absolute. With icy, fumbling fingers she found and lit a candle, and by its unsteady glow, she returned to Alistair, who was kneeling beside their prisoner and had secured the man’s wrists with his cravat.

“I don’t know how long that will last,” he said, looking up at her. “We need help.” She thought of the handful of servants, mostly young women, and the elderly butler, Mr. Wellend. “Go to the drawing room. Fetch Forster.”

“The curate?”

“Hurry.”

She did as she had been bid, though her head was filled with doubts. Though she’d only met him that evening, and briefly, he had struck her as rather too gentle and studious to provide much assistance in such a matter. He was young, yes, but...well, rather doughy.

When she burst into the drawing room, her eyes were momentarily dazzled by the blaze of light. Her mind struggled to make sense of the discovery that almost everyone was still assembled, chatting and drinking and admiring the portrait of Alistair, oblivious to what had occurred.

“Mr. Forster,” she blurted out, heedless of the rector’s wife’s gasp or Lady Posenby’s gimlet-eyed stare. “Please come. We need your help. Lord Ryland has apprehended an intruder, and the man is built like a mountain.”

Edwina, who had been seated near the fire, stood up. “Not the man who accosted me on the moor yesterday?”

“What?”

Doughy , had she thought? Forster’s face was carved from granite—so too the fists curled at his side.

“I’ll explain on the way,” Constantia promised.

He turned toward Edwina. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, stepping closer to him as if to prove the point.

“Please,” said Constantia. “We haven’t much time.”

After glancing over his beloved to assure himself she was still in one piece, he gave a sharp nod of satisfaction, then turned to Constantia and said, “Lead the way.”

Back again they raced, down the stairs, across entry hall, and out to the cloisters, while Constantia breathlessly told him of Edwina’s frightening encounter and her own too-frequent alarms.

“What does the fellow want?” he demanded as together they pushed the heavy oak door wide.

“That’s what I’m hoping to discover,” she said as they entered to find the prisoner sitting upright, eyes closed, with his head tipped against the wall.

Alistair was standing a few feet away, sheltering the candle from the draft. Constantia hurried to him. “He hasn’t said anything,” he told her. “Except your name.”

A chill passed through her, one that had nothing to do with the storm and the cold stone pressing in upon them. She wished she still had Alistair’s arms around her, but of course, that had happened before only because of the panic of the moment, both his and hers. She must not expect his embrace again. Certainly not in front of the curate. “What do we do now?”

Forster, who was not a big man, nonetheless reached down and grabbed the fellow by the scruff of the neck, clearly intending to drag him to his feet. “I say we make him explain himself. And then, we make him pay for what he’s done.”

The normally quiet man’s vehemence and sudden taste for vengeance drove Alistair’s brows up his forehead. “He approached Edwina on the moor yesterday,” she explained, “and gave her an awful fright.” The brows dove downward at that. “She also wears a green cloak, did you know? I realized immediately he must actually have been after me.”

“That’s why you were so determined to leave tonight,” Alistair said. “To draw him away from here.” She couldn’t disagree.

But, oh, she didn’t want to go.

Even after they heard everything the mysterious man had to say, however, what really would have changed?

Alistair was an earl. He had responsibilities. There could be no place for a nameless, as-good-as-penniless artist in his life.

Together, Alistair and Mr. Forster raised their prisoner from the floor and pushed him toward the door, directing his wobbly steps along the cloisters and into the entry hall. She followed along, valise in hand. “Where to now?” asked Mr. Forster, and Alistair looked at her.

“The drawing room?” she said, thinking only of the blaze of candlelight. She wanted desperately to be free of the darkness and fear surrounding this stranger.

Surprise flickered across Alistair’s expression, but he nodded and nudged the man in the direction of the east wing stairs.

When the four of them appeared in the drawing room, Constantia in front and the trio of men, one bound, behind her, heads swiveled and mouths popped open. Her stomach dropped as if she had just swallowed a mouthful of lead. She had not considered how it would feel to have whatever the stranger might say revealed before a dozen pairs of curious eyes.

Lady Posenby snapped her lorgnette. “Is this the man, Lady Edwina?” she asked as the curate shoved him into a chair that looked entirely too spindly to bear his weight. She recalled the story of the broken chair in the pub—had this truly been the man involved? The others crowded about.

Slumped and squinting against the light, he appeared far less fearsome than he had in the dark. It became apparent that at least some of his bulk was a heavy, fur-lined coat and stout boots. He had the haggard complexion of a man who had been on a long, difficult journey. Constantia judged him to be about fifty years of age, with sandy hair that had begun to gray and needed to be trimmed.

When he looked at her with his bright blue eyes, she saw...relief.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why are you here?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then squinted as if his head ached, which under the circumstances seemed unlikely to be an act. “ Trinken ...” he rasped. “Please, somefink to trink?”

They all seemed to be dumbfounded by the request, such that for a moment, no one moved. At last Edwina rose, went to the tea table, poured a cup, and brought it to him. “Careful, Eddie.” Mr. Forster spoke low, in a wary tone, as she held the cup to the man’s lips and helped him to drink.

“ Danke ,” he said, looking up at Edwina with grateful eyes once he had drained the cup. “I frighten you,” he said to her. “Outside, ja? Entschuldigung . I mean no harm.”

Edwina drew in a sharp breath. “Why, then? Why did you do it?”

“You.” He nodded toward Constantia. “Her.”

“I believe he mistook you for me,” Constantia explained. “Our cloaks are very similar in color.” She turned to the mysterious man. “But then, why me?”

“You...lost. So many years. But I...find.”

“Can’t you speak proper English?” Lady Posenby demanded. “At this rate, we shall be sitting here all night waiting for answers. You must have some explanation.” She looked sharply at Constantia.

“Miss Cooper has been concerned for some time that someone was following her,” Alistair said, stepping in to explain. “It spurred her decision to leave London, in fact. And this fellow lurking about”—he jerked his head toward the stranger—“would appear to be the proof she was right. But I agree with you on one thing. These one-word answers won’t get us far.”

Harriet had been wending her way around the edge of the circle and came to stand beside her brother. “I believe I can help. Sprechen sie Deutsch? ” she asked the man.

Relief surged into his face. “ Deutsch! Ja!” And followed those giddy exclamations with a stream of words that made Harriet blink.

“ Langsam, bitte ,” she said to him, and from the gesture she made as she spoke, Constantia gathered she had asked him to slow down.

He obliged, or tried to. Harriet had to stop him frequently to ask for clarification.

“Well?” Lady Posenby snapped.

“Wait,” Alistair said, before his youngest sister could speak. “We should consider that whatever this man has to say may be full of untruths. It may also concern matters of a deeply personal nature—”

A combination of gratitude and relief made Constantia’s shoulders sag. But of course, having heard most of her story already, he understood how reluctant she would be to share it with the rest of them.

Several members of the assembled company immediately took his meaning. “We should be only too glad to go and grant you privacy,” said the rector, “but I fear the storm prevents us from safely traveling home anytime soon.”

“If you will follow me, sir, ma’am,” said Edwina with one of her usual gracious smiles, “I will be only too happy to see that you are made comfortable for the night.” And then, a bit more sharply, she added, “Freddie, Georgie,” and jerked her chin to indicate that they were to follow too.

They protested vociferously, but eventually did as they’d been bid.

Forster moved as if intending to go with the rector and his wife, but Alistair motioned for him to stay. “I may yet have need of your help.”

Alistair’s gaze then swiveled to his aunt, a none too gentle hint that, as Constantia’s situation concerned her not at all, she certainly had no cause to stay.

But Lady Posenby was the sort of woman who believed everything was her concern. She lifted her chin and met her nephew’s eye with a haughty stare, then motioned Danielle to her side with a snap of her fingers, as one might bring a dog to heel. Constantia saw a muscle in Alistair’s jaw twitch.

At last, he looked at her, lifting one shoulder and tipping his head as if to say, I’ve done my best. The rest is up to you . She turned to Harriet and nodded for her to continue.

“He says that he has been watching you,” Harriet translated. “No, watching over you for years. He—he claims you are a daughter of the Royal House of Friedensfeld, and that he can prove it, if we will but untie his hands.”

A chorus of scoffing noises rose.

“The drawing master? Royal? Ridiculous,” declared Lady Posenby.

“A nice trick,” said Forster. “Asking to be untied. He must think us fools.”

Alistair looked again at Constantia. “Well?”

She hesitated. How could she trust a stranger? Trust this man who had been the cause of so many waking nightmares and sleepless nights?

“Ask him, please, about this proof he claims to have,” she told Harriet. “Find out what it is.”

“A piece of jewelry,” Harriet translated a moment later. “And a...well, I’m not sure. A paper of some kind?”

“The jewelry...is it an earring?” Constantia asked, tugging on her bare earlobe.

The man, who apparently understood the gesture if not the English words she had spoken, nodded eagerly. “ Sie waren ein Geschenk —uh, uh, a geeft.”

“Show me.”

With obvious reluctance, Alistair stepped forward to untie his wrists. Mr. Forster came, too, positioning himself next to them and laying a warning hand on the man’s shoulders. “Don’t try anything foolish.”

The man rubbed his wrists and looked affronted at the suggestion. “ Ich bin Herr Dieter Schenk ,” he said, jerking a thumb toward his chest once the feeling had returned to his hands. “ Abgesandte zum ...”

Constantia turned desperate eyes to Harriet, who wore an uncertain frown. “His name is Mr. Schenk. Beyond that, I’m not sure.”

With a racing heart, she watched as Mr. Schenk reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a folded parchment bearing an elaborate seal and something still hidden in his fist. Then he opened his hand to reveal an earring identical to the one she’d sold so long ago.

“He says...that you were lost to them for many years, but the appearance of this, this—oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know! Crown jewel? But that hardly seems right, for how could you have come by any such thing? Anyway, because of...whatever it was, he was sent to London to find you, but you...you hid. He says he knew you had not gone far, because he could identify you by your drawings, the ones you made for...” Harry’s eyes rounded to saucers. “Miss Cooper?”

“ Nein! ” Mr. Schenk protested. “ Nicht Cooper. Bah! Das ist eine Beleidigung .” And he waved the paper vigorously in their faces.

“Settle yourself,” said Mr. Forster, tightening his grip on the man’s shoulder.

Mr. Schenk might easily have thrown off his hand, but instead his broad shoulders sagged, and he sent a desperate look to Harriet, Alistair, and Constantia. “ Bitte? ”

“What’s he on about now?” asked Lady Posenby, who, despite her determination to stay, was watching the proceedings with an expression that said she’d seen better performances on the London stage.

“I’m not...sure,” murmured Constantia, even as she rose and went toward the door, where she had dropped her valise when they had entered. Kneeling beside it, she rummaged in its depths and withdrew the leather case. “But I think it must have something to do with my mother and father.”

She approached Mr. Schenk with the case held out before her, as if it were a cannonball she feared to drop. Opening the clasp, she hooked a finger in a crevice of the frame and withdrew the matching earring. Those standing nearest gasped.

But Mr. Schenk had eyes only for the picture. “ Sie sehen wie Ihre Mutter aus. ”

Harriet whispered the wholly unnecessary translation: “You look like your mother.”

“It’s true my name is not Cooper,” Constantia explained, looking around the small group of wide-eyed faces as she clutched the portrait to her chest. “My mother was an Englishwoman, and my father—I never knew. An itinerant artist. When I was a young woman, I discovered that I inherited some portion of his skill. The last few months, I have been drawing cartoons for Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses .”

“Miss C.,” breathed Harry, a shade too reverently for Constantia’s taste. Lady Posenby clucked.

“How this man came to concoct such a fabulous tale about my origins, or where he acquired what looks like my mother’s earring, I cannot say—”

“ Keine M?rchen, ” Mr. Schenk insisted, rattling the paper again. “No fable.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Alistair gently, “we ought to read it.”

“ Ich lese , ja! ” With a grin, Mr. Schenk broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and began to read aloud—in German. Constantia’s head ached from trying to pick out meaning from the unfamiliar sounds. She heard her own name, its syllables delightfully strange on Mr. Schenk’s tongue, and preceded by a word that sounded a great deal like—but no. That could never be.

“Did he—?” Harriet ventured. “Did he say princess ? Auf Englisch, bitte? ” she pleaded with Mr. Schenk, who grinned again.

“ Ja, ja. Moment. ” He dragged one stout finger down the page, then jabbed the paper and looked up at Constantia. “ Auch auf Englisch. Für Ihre Mutter, natürlich. ”

“The document also contains an English translation,” Harriet explained. “For your mother’s benefit.”

“In that case, may I?” Lady Posenby stepped forward and snatched the paper from his hand. “I’d rather not listen to this fellow mangle every other word.” Without any assistance from her lorgnette, and in a voice that grew more incredulous with every sentence, she read out,

A Proclamation of Prince Christoph, of the Royal House of Friedensfeld

Made this seventeenth day of February, seventeen hundred eighty-four.

I, Christoph von Friedensfeld, do hereby make known my marriage, lawful in the eyes of God, to the Lady Marianne Kent and announce the birth of a daughter, heiress of my body, to be known henceforth as the princess Constantia .. .

There was more, but the buzzing in Constantia’s ears would let her hear none of it. If Alistair hadn’t helped her to a chair, she might have fainted. “It isn’t true,” she insisted to him. “It can’t be.”

He slipped the parchment from his aunt’s slackened grasp and inspected the seal, then looked at her with marveling eyes. “I think it might be.”