WÜRTTEMBERG’S GRAND PRINCE WILHELM BECOMES A BEACON IN NATION’S DARK TIMES
Calvin Archer, New York Office
The once-prosperous, resource-rich Germanic nation of Württemberg has fallen on hard times in recent years, with consensus assigning King Charles’s timorous leadership and deference to larger neighboring powers with much of the blame. Hope for a more prosperous future, however, has taken the form of Grand Prince Wilhelm Karl Paul Heinrich Friedrich, a widowed Württembergian noble who has pledged to protect his nation’s greatness from outside influence and further exploitation.
Prince Wilhelm, described as a thoughtful, courageous, quiet man, is no stranger to overcoming misfortune himself, having lost his wife and stillborn daughter in childbirth in 1882, as well as his infant son, his only male heir, just two years prior...
Chapter 7
Welcome to the Season
The Patriarch’s Ball
January 29, 1884
Ames
Angle: Validation
“The hair... the hair still isn’tsetting.” Pearl Ames paces behind her daughter, who remains statue-still before her dressing room’s cheval mirror while her lady’s maid and three additional temporary hires for the evening flit about, attempting to forge Arabella’s determinedly straight hair into piles of curls.
Her daughter bites the corner of her lip, her eyes starting to well.
“It keeps! Going! Limp!” Pearl squeaks, picking up a lank, uncurling lock. “And rouge, we needrouge. She looks more like a mouse than a future queen.”
They cannot turn up to the first great social event of 1884 looking chintzy. There will be snickers no matter what theydo—“Ah, that family has arrived. Can’t recall their name. Is it the Parvenus?” “I can smell the steel factory on them from here!”—and Pearl knows there’s no culling those backhanded jibes entirely.
Not without something to wave in their smug, old-guard faces. Like aroyal title.
“I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, Mama,” Arabella whispers in a tone that makes Pearl wonder whether her choice of insult was a little rash, in the way of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The girl’s always been self-conscious about her diminutive height, her round ears, and timidity only renders her more mouselike. “We’ve only exchanged a few letters.”
Arabella’s gaze darts to her bedroom door, toward the little desk where she keeps the letters she receives from Prince Wilhelm of Württemberg—in which he recounts his love for his country, his courage in the face of oppression, his grief over his late wife and longing for new companionship, and his gratitude for these warm correspondences with his new American friend. Pearl knows all this because she’s read every letter. What responsible parent wouldn’t? And how else would Arabella have known to enclose just the right sketch of herself to send along with her last reply?
“Arabella, keep your head still.” Pearl huffs a breath, attempting to collect herself. Too much emotion, fretting, and she’s going to begin to sweat and ruin the three coats of powder she applied earlier. She nods to the servants. “Twirl and pin a few pieces like so, I suppose, and then we must just accept failure here and move on, or risk missing the event entirely.”
Pearl willnotbe compensating the extra help for this “acceptable failure,” but that can be addressed by her housekeeper after they’ve left for the ball.
“The duchess will be there tonight, won’t she?” Arabella adds. “I must admit, I get a bit nervous in her presence.”
“As well you should, child. Your entire future rests on her opinion of you,” Pearl says. “If all goes according to plan, she will become your sister-in-law—oh, and that reminds me. You must immediately take her young cousin under your wing. We wouldn’t want the duchess to consider you entirely self-interested.”
“I’m not self-interested,” Arabella weakly protests. “I can’t think of a single thing I want for myself.”
“Well, that’s not exactly a useful attitude either, is it?” Pearl huffs a breath, praying for patience. “Listen closely, Arabella, since you are new to all of this and I am not. Tonight is the Patriarch’s Ball. You, along with every other debutante in attendance, have been invited for a reason, and that reason is to be presented to a bevy of bachelors, all proven eminently suitable by the fact that they were invited in the first place. But they are meredistractions, as our sights are set far beyond ‘suitable.’ Across the Atlantic, mind you. International royalty. Do you understand?”
At that, Arabella seems to brighten a little, her eyes drifting away from her own reflection in thought.
“The cousin will make ripples, no doubt,” Pearl muses. “Even if she’s ugly. We must create the illusion of having been introduced to her previously, so that all of society sees our place in the affections of the Württemberg royal family. And above all, we must reassure the duchess that we are her greatest friends on these shores.”
Pearl’s heart begins to hammer against her corset’s boning.
She has successfully cornered the market on the duchess’s affections, has she not? Though it has struck her that theduchess has only accepted her invitations for tea, never dinner. Does that mean something? It’s only a matter of time before other families begin angling for her attention, as well as that of the eligible heiress in her charge. And through them, a connection to the prince for their own unmarried daughters.
Real competition for his affections could start as early as tonight.
Pearl must move their relationship forward in some manner, immediately. Perhaps a shared personal detail, told in confidence, in order to knit them together as bosom friends...
She realizes Arabella is staring at her.
