The coach door opened.
It was time.
They all knew who she was, and Marchmont wasn’t in the least surprised.
Only the London mob—ordinary people—had been present when she’d appeared on the balcony of Lexham House. Few if any members of the aristocracy would have been in that crowd, mingling with the unwashed. He doubted that anyone in the entrance hall of the Queen’s House had seen any more of Zoe than the caricatures and the single etching that had accompanied Beardsley’s story. Pamphlets having sold like Holland bulbs during the tulip craze, a book version had come out this week, the more expensive editions containing colored illustrations of her adventures.
That was all anyone in Society but the handful who’d attended the dinner had seen of Miss Lexham.
The world knew who she was all the same. Even the Beau Monde was capable, in desperate circumstances, of putting two and two together. Its members observed him and observed her mother and drew the logical conclusion.
They also drew away, insofar as the crowded quarters and court dress would allow. The hall was the customary seething sea of people, the ladies with their gloved hands down, keeping their hoops compressed—and out of range of the gentlemen’s swords.
He was aware of some of the ladies compressing a little more tightly and edging away from Zoe, as though in fear of contamination. He fumed, but there was nothing he could do except remember the names of each and every lady who did this and resolve that each and every one of them would live to regret it very much, indeed.
He felt a hand on his arm and looked down. It was Zoe’s hand, encased in its long white glove, with diamond bracelets hanging from the wrist. She’d had to draw near to touch him, her elbows being occupied with keeping the hoops out of danger. Her scent wafted up to him, rising, he was all too aware, from the warm flesh abundantly displayed mere inches from his nose and framed in lace and rose-colored satin. The bottommost and largest diamond of her necklace nestled in the inviting valley between her breasts.
“You look very dangerous,” she said in an undertone. “You can’t murder them only because they’re…shy.” She smiled up at him.
“I was not looking danger—‘Shy’?”
“Let’s pretend that’s what it is.”
He preferred to imagine himself knocking their plumed headdresses off their heads.
“Never mind them,” she said. “They don’t trouble me. When first I went into the harem, almost everyone tried to make me feel unwanted, and they were much less inhibited about it than English ladies.”
“I’d always imagined women in the harem as subtle,” he said, trying to match her carefree smile. He was used to wearing masks, but this was beyond him. She put up a brave front, but he knew that the stupid women about them had hurt her feelings—and they didn’t even know her!
“‘Go away you filthy thing,’ they would say,” she said. “‘Why did you come here? No one wants you.’ They called me names. They locked me in cupboards. They played silly tricks. They were like spiteful children. But those women were never allowed to grow up, really. This is nothing.” She shook her head and the plumes bobbed.
“It may be nothing to you,” he said. “It’s something to me.”
“No one here can hinder or help me now,” she said. “You got me here. The rest is up to me.” Her blue gaze shifted toward the staircase. A partition divided it as far as the first landing, where the stairway separated into two branches. One part of the mob was aimed upward on one side while another was aimed downward. Nobody seemed to be actually moving, but that was normal.
“They’ll have a difficult time keeping away when we climb the stairs,” Zoe said. “That should be amusing.”
He didn’t think so.
It took three-quarters of an hour to get from the bottom of the stairs to the top. The parade was making its way slowly through four rooms, and as they reached the corridor, she could see them all through the open doorways: the plumes bobbing, some colored, most of them white, the lacy lappets dangling over the ladies’ shoulders, the jewels blinking in the light, and the billowing gowns in every color of the rainbow.
It was very beautiful, and the sight alone would have made her happy. She was home, among her people—even if some of them didn’t want her.
Marchmont was here, her knight, ready to slay dragons for his protégée. He looked very dangerous, indeed, glowering at the company through those slitted eyes—and with a sword at his side, no less.
But he could not slay any dragons for her now. He could not present her to the Queen. Mama must do that, and Zoe must make herself presentable.
They entered the saloon, and Zoe saw her, finally: an old and clearly unwell lady under a red velvet and gold canopy. She sat on a red velvet and gold chair. The chair was not raised very high, merely two steps above the floor. The princesses and ladies-in-waiting stood nearby.
People walked up to the Queen and bowed and curtseyed. Ahead of Zoe, one girl, who seemed dreadfully young, was being presented. She wore a modest, ivory-colored gown.
But Zoe was not a young girl. She was different, and it would have been silly to pretend she wasn’t.
Today wasn’t a presentation day, though, and Zoe would not stand out so much from all the young virgins in their maidenly gowns. Most of the ladies and gentlemen who paused before the elderly figure on the velvet chair were well known to her. She said a few words to the girl, Zoe noticed, but merely nodded to most of those who made their bows and curtseys.
Zoe watched it all, fascinated.
Then there was no one left ahead of them. Mama moved up to the canopied place and there was Zoe, right behind her. Mama said something, but Zoe couldn’t hear it because her ears were ringing.
Don’t faint, she commanded herself. You’ve come this far, all those miles from the palace of Yusri Pasha, all those miles from captivity.
She glanced away from the Queen and her gaze fell upon Marchmont, who stood among the diplomats. Though his beautiful face was as unreadable as always, she discerned the conspiratorial glint in his green eyes. She remembered how he’d called her “brat.”
The dizziness passed, and she was sinking into her curtsey—deep, deep, deeper than anyone else could do, because she’d lived in a world where one prostrated oneself before superiors, and everyone was a woman’s superior. There a woman was merely a possession to be bought and used and discarded upon a whim.
Here at least a woman could be somebody.
She sank nearly to the floor, and it was like sinking into a dream, so unreal: the elderly woman under the red velvet and gold canopy and the mirrors on either side reflecting the splendor all around: the room’s rich furnishings and the colorful dress of the company and the plumes and glittering diamonds and the sparkling chandeliers.
As she rose, she became aware of the Queen’s puzzled expression and a pause, a stilling of the atmosphere. A silence fell, as though all the world held its breath.
Then the old lady on the red and gold velvet chair said, “We are glad of your return, Miss Lexham.”
Confounded, utterly confounded, utterly lost, Zoe yet managed to say, “Thank you, Your Majesty,” because it had been drummed into her as a safe thing to say. She couldn’t have said any more than that in any case, she was so thunderstruck by the Queen’s words.
Glad of your return.
Queen Charlotte said, “You favor our good friend, your grandmother. We shall look forward to seeing you again.”
Zoe understood this was a signal to withdraw. She murmured thanks and started backing away.
One did not turn one’s back on the Queen.
One of the princesses—Zoe wasn’t sure which one—stepped forward before she could commence curtseying herself out of the room.
The princess said, “We greatly admire your courage, Miss Lexham.”
Only that. One quick sentence and one quick smile before she returned to her sisters.
Zoe had to be content with that, though she had a
hundred questions to ask. But in such a crowd, the royals hadn’t time to talk to everybody. Most of the time, they let people pass with no conversation at all.
She was halfway to the door when a very fat gentleman, most elaborately dressed, stopped her. “We are very glad of your return, Miss Lexham,” he said.
She dared to look up into the pale blue eyes. She saw tears there.
She became aware of Marchmont: She felt his presence before she actually saw him.
“Your Highness,” came his deep voice from somewhere above her right shoulder. “I thank you for your kindness.”
“A brave young woman,” said the Prince Regent—for that was who the fat gentleman was. “Stay a moment with us, Marchmont.”
Zoe breathed thanks and curtseyed and curtseyed and curtseyed until she was safely out of the room.
She found her mother and met her gaze but only squeezed her hand, because she couldn’t trust herself to speak.
She was afraid to say anything. She didn’t want to spoil it. She was afraid she’d wake up and find it was all a dream and the Queen had not given her the golden gift of approval, with a princess and the Regent himself echoing it.
She couldn’t stand stock-still, gaping, though, so she blindly followed her mother into the sea of people, the voices rising and falling around her.
What seemed like hours later—and might have been, progress through the rooms was so slow—she felt a hand at her elbow. Even without looking she knew it was Marchmont’s hand. But she did look up at him, into his beautiful face, and saw the smile hovering at the corner of his mouth.
“Well done,” he said.
A thousand feelings welled up in her heart. She looked away, because she knew her eyes would tell everything, and everything was far more than she wanted him to see.