“But now they think otherwise because of that bracelet,” Christoph said.
She stilled. “You’re saying I’m still not safe, aren’t you?”
“Not as long as enemies of the king suspect you’re Alana Stindal.”
“Then the king has to admit the truth!”
Christoph gave her a reproving look. “We don’t tell the king what to do. But you need only think about it to know that he can’t do that, at least, now would not be the time for such a confession. He deceived his people. Some will understand the necessity for it, but his enemies will pounce on it and use it to their advantage. Had the princess survived, that confession would have been cause to rejoice. Now—”
‘’I understand,” Alana mumbled. “And all the more reason for me to go home to London where I can hide safely again. There’s nothing else to keep me here.”
“Nothing?”
“You mean my mother? I’ll take her home with me.”
“She lives in grand splendor in the royal chalet,” he informed her. “She was given quarters there for life, her reward for the sacrifice she made. She isn’t going to want to live in your sooty London.”
“How do you know London is sooty?”
“My maternal grandmother lives there.”
“Why there instead of here?”
“Because she’s English.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
ENGLISH?!” ALANA EXCLAIMED. “WERE you never going to mention that?”
“I just did,” Christoph said with some amusement.
“But you’re half-English!”
“Only a quarter. My mother is half, though to listen to her flawless Lubinian, you would never think so.”
“I bet you speak English, too, don’t you?”
“Perfectly.” He chucked her chin, then laughed when she swatted his hand away. “I couldn’t tell you because you were under interrogation. Now you’re not.”
“Meaning now you can be honest with me? Too bloody late,” she fumed. But she only sat there in stiff chagrin for a minute before her curiosity got the better of her. “How did that happen?”
He chuckled. “My guess would be in the usual way.”
“You know what I meant.”
“My English grandmother was an artist. Painting was her passion, but she was dissatisfied with her skill. An Austrian painter had inspired her, but he didn’t stay in England for very long. English painters were found to teach her but she was already more skilled than they. So before she came of age, she talked her mother into taking her on a trip to Austria to find that old teacher of hers. My great-grandmother didn’t object. Her only condition was that they return to England in time for her marriage.”
“She was betrothed?”
“Yes. But she fell in love with a young man while in Austria, a Lubinian finishing his schooling there.”
“Because there are no schools here?”
“There weren’t any then. There are schools now, though we still have no university. The nobles import tutors or send their young out of the country to be educated. But Frederick has had schools built for the commoners. They sit mostly empty.”
“So he is actually trying to bring this country forward into the nineteenth century?”
“Do you realize how disparaging that question is?”
