The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 51

Stringing Adelaide along was torture. Enduring the cloud of her noxious perfume and every one of her grating giggles frayed my paper-thin patience. She took to mother's idea like a moth to a flame, and moved into the royal quarters as if she'd been born to live there. Thankfully, she didn't suspect a thing when she was handed off from Lissa to mother to me then back to Lissa every day. I suffered through dinners and operas and balls on her arm, all while forced to wear a smile that I couldn't make reach my eyes no matter how hard I tried. Each time she was fawned over beside me, I died a little inside. But it wasn't real. I had to keep telling myself that it wasn't real, and that it would be worth it.

Every night, after Lissa had locked Adelaide in her room, she came to Mother's study with Adelaide's correspondence. Somehow, my mother knew how to slide open the sealed letters with a hot knife and undetectably reseal them. Anne helped Mother and I read them, and once Libby learned what we were up to, she insisted on helping too.

"This might be in code," Libby said one day, a week later, turning the letter this way and that.

Mother glanced over at her over the spectacles perched on the end of her nose. "In code?"

"She's not smart enough to use a code," Anne harrumphed, from where she'd collapsed in a most unladylike way on the bay window seat.

"I read that one. I think it really is just her discussing the weather with Penelope Roxton," I said, swallowing my nausea as I set down a letter to Lady Winters, in which Adelaide asked for new dresses and perfumes to better "entice me towards the altar."

"Penelope Roxton's just jealous of her little sister who replaced her this Season," Anne said. "I'm sure she's sending letters to anyone remotely connected to the court just to gather gossip."

"Still. Why would Penelope care about the weather?" Libby pressed.

I massaged the bridge of my nose. "Penelope Roxton makes no sense as Dulciana's other spy. She has no influence and she's not even at court. We need to be looking for someone who's here."

"I don't have to help you, you know," Libby said with a scowl.

"Perhaps you ought to get some rest," Mother said gently. "There aren't terribly many today. We'll have them read and re-sealed by—"

"No." I picked up the next one from the pile of unsealed letters. "I'm not tired."

And so we read until Andrew came to bid Libby goodnight after his nightly meeting with Father—a meeting I wasn't invited to. That grated on me as well. I'd wasted a whole damned week already and he hadn't even bothered to hear me out. Mother had urged patience and warned me not to press him. It was a test, I knew it was, but I was getting awfully tired of being tested. Especially when the seconds ticked closer and closer to the end of my month to save Beatriz.

Hours later, I stared at the canopy of my bed in the dark silence of my gaping chamber of a room. It was still too cold and my bed was too plush and too large and too comfortable. Really, all I wished for were the night stars overhead and a bedroll. Perhaps that might help me fall asleep faster.

I rolled over and punched a pillow, suffocated by my uselessness. It had been a week. I should've at least come up with a plan by now. But Andrew had assured me he was working on it too—he wanted to hear from the ambassador to Vareinne before we planned anything. If Dulciana's ships had left Brévis, we needed to factor that into our planning. If they'd already sailed home, Vareinne might yet be swayed to help us, especially if we struck swiftly to prevent any retaliation.

Something clattered on my balcony. I shot upright, straining my ears. My breathing was thunderous in the silence. But not as thunderous as the click of the balcony door latch opening. I rolled off the bed, lunging for the sword I'd been polishing earlier to calm my fidgeting hands.