“And the reception last night?” Agnes prompted, when May said nothing. “How was it? Did you see Prince Eddy?”
May stiffened. “As I told you before, I’m done chasing after Eddy.”
“What about Princess Hélène? Did she look unhappy?” Agnes pressed.
May’s stomach twisted with a sudden suspicion. Hélène and Eddy had seemed a bit strange last night, hadn’t they? At one point May thought she’d caught the French princess staring daggers at her, though she couldn’t imagine why.
“Agnes,” she said slowly. “What did you do?”
The rubies in Agnes’s ears glimmered, looking suddenly grotesque, like droplets of blood. She leaned back with a sigh.
“I’m sorry if you disapprove, but I wrote a letter to Princess Hélène—telling her what we know, urging her to do the right thing.”
“Agnes!” May’s stomach plummeted. “What did Hélène say? Did she reply?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Has she?” Agnes threw up her hands in an impatient gesture. “Because I wrote the letter asyou!”
May dug her gloved hands into the cushions. They turned a corner and the carriage swayed, but neither of them moved.
“Youimpersonatedme?”
“I did what you were too squeamish and proper to do. Now the way to Eddy is clear, just as you always wanted it tobe!”
May should have been livid, yet all she felt was a dull weariness. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? After all, Agnes had admitted to forging letters before.
“Maybeyoushould marry Eddy, since you’re so fixated on him that you’ll resort to blackmail,” she snapped.
“Believe me, if I could marry him, I would!” It was perhaps the truest statement Agnes had ever spoken. “Since I can’t, it should at the very least be you.”
May stared out the window. They had turned onto a street near the harbor; she saw the wind ruffling the white-capped waves, boats hurrying back toward shore. “How dare you. I told you that I didn’t want to do anything to Hélène—”
“But we didn’t do anythingtoHélène! She dug her own grave, and will have to live with the consequences of her choices,” Agnes exclaimed. “All we did was remind her of what she had already done. You can’t let yourself feel guilty about this.”
“Of course I feel guilty!” Perhaps it wasn’t too late; May could go find Hélène at the reception tonight, explain that this was all a misunderstanding.
“I can tell you’re thinking of ways to undo what I’ve done. Stop,” Agnes said brutally. “This is why women are still the weaker sex, because we worry too much about how other people feel. Just look at your mother! She failed to look out for her own interests, and where did it get her? Married to a buffoon who frittered away her inheritance.”
“There’s no need to speak about my father like that,” May shot back, though all Agnes had done was voice May’s own secret thoughts.
“I’m sorry!” Agnes held out her hands in a gesture of apology. “All I mean is that men—your father, Prince Eddy, even George—think of themselves first. Men never worry abouthurtingpeople; they take what they want, when they want it. If women could act like that even a fraction of the time, we wouldn’t be at the mercy of men.”
May didn’t want to listen, but there was a dangerous logic to Agnes’s thinking. Her words slipped under May’s skin like a whisper, taking root in her brain.
The carriage pulled onto the street that led to the Cathedral of Athens. The flags that lined the road whipped about in the blustery wind. The sidewalks teemed with people, crowds thronging in the hope of glimpsing their future queen.
“You seem angry,” Agnes said tentatively.
May didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or scream. “Of course I’m angry! I told you I didn’t want to go down this road and you did it anyway. You pretended tobeme!”
Agnes stared at her for a moment. “I see,” she said at last, with maddening calm. “You haven’t given up, just changed course. You’re going after Prince Eddy’s brother instead.”
When May said nothing, Agnes nodded, vindicated. “Well, May, I have to admit that I’m shocked. I never thought you would settle for a lesser prince.”
Even though it was how everyone thought, no one ever spoke such things aloud. It was jarring, hearing Agnes actually refer to George aslesser.
But she was right, wasn’t she? That was how the lawsof succession worked, not just in the royal family but for everyone. The oldest son inherited while other sons were left to scramble for themselves, to settle for army positions or minor estates while their older brothers took everything: the family castle, the name, the title, the power.
As for daughters? No one spared them a thought except as bargaining chips in the marriage game.
