Her entire body was failing her. What she had seen, the implication of the truth that had just hit her with full impact, was so preposterous, so outrageous, so immensely painful, that, surely, there was nothing left but for her body to cease and die.
She felt a small hand in her hair, and a voice that whispered, urgently, “Anna. Anna.”
Someone lifted her shoulders and sat her up. “Breathe. Breathe slowly.” She felt a hand on her forehead, and the pungent, sharp smell of hartshorn salt stinging her nostrils.
“Good. Yes. Again.”
She breathed in again, deeply, and then, oddly enough, the ringing in her ears subsided, and the feeling in her chest lightened, and maybe she would not die after all.
Just yet.
But then the tears came. Hot and wild, they poured out of her eyes, quite against her will.
And she grabbed the shoulder of the girl who had held the hartshorn salt to her nose and wept her heart out.
“It’s quite all right. Cry. Cry as much as you want. We’re the only ones in the room. The others have night duties since they were out all day. I suppose that’s the advantage of having had to stay in during the parade.” Henni patted her hair.
Pippa cried even more, until she felt quite dry, and exhausted, and her body was racking with dry sobs.
“You must love him very much,” Henni said quietly, when she was done.
That nearly set Pippa off in another burst of weeping, except this time she held herself back and took the linen handkerchief Henni handed her.
“I never cry. I was even proud of it. But ever since I arrived in Vienna that is all I seem to do.” She dabbed her cheeks with the handkerchief and crumpled it to a ball.
“Weeping is good. Especially when you have heartache; the kind one has when one has lost a loved one.” Henni put the stopper on the vial of hartshorn salt and set it on the nightstand.
“He really is Klemens.” Pippa’s voice cracked. Saying it aloud was so much worse than thinking it. She heaved another dry sob. “Prince Lucifer.”
Henni looked at her in disbelief. “The man you are to marry? How can this be?”
“I don’t know, Henni.” Pippa leaned back against the pillow, her eyes feeling puffy and swollen, and her voice hoarse from crying. “But I would recognise Klemens anywhere. It is him. And what’s worse, he-he-he didn’t recognise me.” Her voice wavered.
“Of course he wouldn’t.” Henni got up, picked up the pillow, shook it and placed it back on the bed. “Youwore a bonnet, had a dust streak over your entire face and you were dressed in the rough garments of a maid. Not even your own mother who had birthed you would recognise you in that outfit. We are servants. Invisible to them, our masters. And when we come across them, they don’t acknowledge us because they don’t see us. When they do, they perceive us as furniture, not as real human beings.”
Pippa twisted the handkerchief between her hands as she uttered the unthinkable. “He is the son of the emperor. An archduke.” Then she laughed a teary laugh, because it was so ludicrous. “I still can’t believe it. There must be some sort of mistake. Maybe he was merely dressing up, pretending to be an archduke.” Maybe it was all a great lark. Maybe he knew she would be watching from afar so he decided to dress up as an archduke to impress her.
Henni looked at her with pity as she settled down next to her on the bed. “I’ve worked here for seven years, so I can say with certainty that it was Archduke Leopold who we saw.”
“Maybe it is a double. Surely it can happen that two people look the same even though they aren’t biologically related. It must happen frequently, in fact. So maybe this doesn’t mean anything at all.” Yes. That must be it. Undoubtedly so. That would make so much more sense than the idea that he really might be the youngest son of the Emperor. The mere thought filled her with dread, panic and fear. She rubbed her cold, clammy hands on her bed linen.
“And what if…what if your Klemens really is the archduke?” A look of excitement entered Henni’s eyes. “How terribly exciting and romantic that would be!”
“The only thing I agree with is that it would be terrible, indeed.”
“You met him in disguise, yes? You said he was a student. Naturally he wouldn’t declare that he was an archduke.”
“Yes, but... Yes…but…he should have told me anyhow.”
Had Papa known? How many people had known? And why had he never told her? Was he ever going to tell her?
And what was worse: was that the reason he had stopped writing?
Because, of course, he was an archduke.
And not just any archduke.
“Prince Lucifer,” Pippa whispered. The hard clump of stone in her stomach turned to ice. All the rumours. The letter that she had found, still crumpled in the pocket of her apron, addressed to his ‘Mimi.’ He evidently had a mistress. According to the rumours not one, but many.
