“Much obliged, Nik.” She bends at the waist. A sitting curtsy. That’s a new one.
“We must do this again tomorrow, Mette. Please tell me you will be here tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes, of course I will be.” Annemette’s face beams in the moonlight.
“Excellent. Shall I send a coach round to your room in the morning? Where are you staying?”
“With me,” I say, the lie we planned ready. “Her chaperone is quite ill.”
Nik’s brows furrow with concern, or maybe it’s doubt. He grows quiet for a moment, and I’d wish he’d speak.
“But then Mette might grow ill,” he says finally, and I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. “And you too, Evie. You both can stay at the palace. I insist.” He turns to me, grin in place, though my face must reflect sheer shock. We’re best friends, but the line in the sand between us has always been the palace. I’ve never stayed there—Queen Charlotte even sent me home the night he nearly drowned. “I’ll message Hansa and have your trunks brought round.”
No. That won’t work. Because then he’ll know Annemette has no trunk—she has nothing but the clotheson her back. “No worries, I’ll get them!” I blurt. “Hansa is too busy to pack her things.”
Nik nods, having gotten what he wanted, the trunks a mere formality.
Annemette grasps my hands and looks me in the eye. “Thank you,” she says. There’s a sincerity in her voice, tinged with desperation that I haven’t heard since she first asked if Nik was alive.
Right. She saved him, and she came here to see him. She had her reasons.
I could kick myself for being so petulant and bitter all night, even if only I noticed. But at least I, too, have achieved my aim. Repaying her good deed with their introduction. And it seems to be worth a lot to her. To both of them. Yet still my stomach flutters, the dock moving as if I’m adrift past the strait, alone on the open sea.
12
IDON’T WANT QUESTIONS.IJUST WANT TO GET UP TOthe castle before the queen finds out about Nik’s invitation. Our lie about Annemette’s noble heritage passed Nik’s scrutiny, but he wanted to believe us. His mother, well, I wouldn’t put it past her to know the name of every noble this side of Prussia.
At the cottage, I blow through the entryway like I’ll hurtle through the back window, through the trees, and off the cliff, but at the last moment, I veer down the hall and into my bedroom.
My grand entry does not escape Tante Hansa, despite the fact that she was surely deep in her thoughts as she distilled octopus ink by candlelight.
“Was that a tempest or my sister’s child bursting through the house?” she asks, coming down the hall.
I ignore her, shutting my door before plowing throughmy chest of drawers for all the proper pieces of a wardrobe—stays, undergarments, stockings, boots, dress. I shove in the latest book of magic I stole from Hansa’s library—Myths of Maritime—too. There might be something in there about mermaids that would be worth a look.
Within a minute, Hansa opens the door. Immediately, her arms cross and her brows pull together. “You aren’t going to smuggle your entire closet out in that trunk, my dear.”
“Who said I was smuggling it?”
Tante Hansa takes a step forward, lips drawn into a perturbed line.
“The bloomers poking out the front.”
Sure enough, the ruched ankle of an undergarment is sticking out of my trunk like a dead man’s tongue.
Hansa tilts her head a bit, one brow now impossibly raised. “Are you going to tell me why you are rushing in and out of here with enough clothes for an entire week at sea? It wouldn’t have to do with your new friend, would it?”
The thought skips to the front of my mind to tell her. If anyone would believe that Annemette is a mermaid, it would be Tante Hansa. But I can’t tell.
“Well, child? Have you formed the perfect bluff in your pretty little head? You’ve had more than enough time.”
“It’s not a bluff. Nik’s asked me to stay at the castle—Annemette, too.”
That earns me an ancient Hansa chuckle. “His festivalduties have the boy in such a tizzy that he needs to sleep with moral support down the hall, does he?”
“Something like that,” I say, though I know Tante Hansa isn’t buying it.
The brow arches higher. “Are you certain that cad from Rigeby Bay hasn’t arrived with promises on his lips and a night’s lodging at the castle?”
