Leopold was a mess. His fine coat was rumpled, his hair had lost its perfect part, and blood stained the front of his shirt in dark, uneven patches. Both of his eyes were beginning to swell, and his once perfectly-straight nose sat crooked in the middle of his face. He kept one hand pressed beneath it, but blood still seeped around his fingers, and every breath came out wet and heavy.
I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands. I already had a very good idea what had happened, and all the thoughts that had been torturing me about Laurel seducing information out of Leopold vanished at once.
“Tell me about this attack,” I said.
The duke gestured his son forward. Leopold limped to the opposite side of my desk and glared at me with as much dignity as a drunken man with a broken nose could manage. His words came out thick and blocked, as if half of them were trapped behind the swelling in his face. “You know dat girl I was with when you came over to give de rose, and I thought it was for her? Isabella?”
“Yes, the tiny little redheaded servant girl,” I said, relishing the wordtiny. “She sat beside you when I brought drinks over during the dance. I remember.”
Leopold’s glare deepened. “She attagged me.”
I leaned forward at once and arranged my face into an expression of grave concern. “She attacked you? Well, we’ll have to deal with that immediately. You’re one of our most esteemed guests here and you have my full apology. We certainly cannot allow such a thing to go unpunished. Tell me exactly what she did.”
Leopold’s gaze slid toward his father, and for the first time, a hint of embarrassment worked its way through the outrage. “It doesn’t batter.”
“Oh, it does, it does,” I assured him, reaching for a piece of parchment and dipping my quill in ink. “I need to write up a report before I discipline her. I only wish I hadn’t left the dance earlier. If I’d stayed, I might’ve been able to deal with her promptly. I’m so sorry I left you alone with her. I had no idea she was so dangerous.”
Leopold shifted on his feet while I wrote the first line of the report in large, official strokes.
Offender: Isabella, young servant girl
I looked up again, keeping my face perfectly serious. “She didn’t look strong enough to overpower anyone, least of all a javelin champion like you. So tell me, how did she attack you?”
The duke gave Leopold a small push forward, clearly impatient for him to speak. The gesture made me think of a mother pushing a small child forward to say hello to a stranger.
“Well,” Leopold said slowly, “she hit be.”
“I can see that,” I said, and added another note beneath her name. “Go on. Did you strike her back?”
“No, I didn’t have tibe. She hit be about…about a hundred tibes and broke by nose.”
“How did such a small girl do all this to you?” I asked, making sure my concern remained visible. “Did she do it alone, or did she have accomplices? Weapons? Surely she must have had weapons.”
Leopold seized on that with drunken enthusiasm. “Yes. She had a…a club.”
“A club,” I repeated solemnly, and wrote beneath the first line.
Weapon: Club
I clicked my tongue in sympathy. “My deepest condolences, my lord. Any accomplices?”
“Um...” Leopold blinked several times, and his swollen eyes struggled to focus. I watched him carefully. His nose would never be straight again, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
He nodded abruptly. “Yes. Um, three. Three accomblices. They hit be too. Then Isabella stepped on by hand. I almostdied.”
He delivered the last words with such dramatic misery that I had clamp my teeth down on my tongue to stop myself from laughing.
Leopold fumbled with his glove, yanking it off to reveal fingers that were already bruising and swollen. Then he lifted the edge of his shirt to show another bruise spreading along his side. I scribbled notes about his injuries, my eyebrows drawn together as though every detail added to the seriousness of the crime rather than to my private enjoyment.
“Well,” I said, “you’re certainly fortunate to be alive.”
The duke cleared his throat. “This is a grievous insult to my family.”
“Of course. She will be disciplined immediately,” I said, giving him the proper nod of respect before turning back to Leopold. “Anything else?”
“She disrespected be.”
“By hitting and kicking you, you mean? With the club, of course. And with the assistance of her”—I consulted my notes—“accomplices?”
