Veronica

“…closer to home? Excuse me? Miss De Vernsey?”

I was brought back to earth by two familiar voices calling my name. I jerked around, smiling apologetically at the marchioness and another merchant I vaguely remembered seeing around the event before. “I apologize, I must have drifted off for a second there. What were you saying?”

The marchioness looked like she was a half-second away from rolling her eyes. The merchant struggled to keep his smile on.

“What do you think about this war of expansion, my dear? Do you think what the prince was saying is true? The kingdom will benefit from increasing its size? Or do you think we should invest our not inconsiderable resources closer to home?” The merchant carefully patted his wispy blond hair into place, as if the very effort of asking a question might have blown away the few strands he had left.

It was a loaded question. He was essentially asking me to make my allegiance with the prince and the king clear—or declare against him. Luckily for him, I had no intentions of keeping my thoughts a secret. Coolly, I replied, “I think no one is adequately considering the true cost of expansion.”

The marchioness snickered, fanning herself with an expensive lace piece her family must have bartered the last remains of their fortune for. “Of course the Crown is aware of how expensive the expansion effort will be. That’s why even families like yours are being invited to these hallowed halls.” Her voice dripped with condescension. I’d made something of an enemy of her by siding with the maid in front of Bennett yesterday. “The royals are hoping merchants will cover the very expensive bill.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong. That’s not the cost I was speaking of.”

“Oh?” She cocked her brow. “Please do explain. I am ever so curious.”

“The true cost will be to the people who will be displaced by the kingdom’s efforts to expand. How many families will be split apart? How many homes will be lost? How much land will be ripped from the hands of those who have lived in them for generations, just so the Crown might be able to build, what—another dog track?”

The vapid blond merchant flapped his hand, leaning away from me as if I was radioactive. The other conversations at the table wavered, then died down completely. Everyone was staring at me, their eyes wide with disbelief. The marchioness was shrinking in her seat, as if she was afraid the others would think she was with me. No doubt she was regretting accepting that ride in my carriage now.

I’d been to enough of these regal events to know I was breaking a hundred and one unwritten social rules, but I also couldn’t care less. The royals needed my family’s wealth. That was why I was there. They didn’t need my blind obedience too.

“The…dog track, Miss De Vernsey?” the merchant said faintly. “I didn’t realize you were so against gambling. A fine trait, indeed. Why, I remember just last summer—”

But I refused to let him change the subject. He had asked for my opinion, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to give it. I glanced over at the prince, but the man seemed engrossed in conversation with a dark-haired beauty and a shriveled old man with black beetle eyes.

“If the royal family stopped to think about all the people they were hurting with their thoughtless land grabs, perhaps they would see there are better ways to rule.”

The prematurely lined faces of my parents came to mind. My mother’s hair had turned a steel gray, her beauty turned to ash far before her time. My father, too, looked twenty years older than he actually was. They never complained because they didn’t want to worry me, but I knew their rapid disintegration was due to the stress from that time.

It was an old story, stretching all the way back to when the dog track sandwiched between the main entrance and the royal’s garden had been a peach farm. My family’s peach farm. No one had known who the De Vernseys were then. We had been humble farmers whose highest ambitions were to buy the next plot over so we could plant apples in the fall.

Then the Crown had seized our land to build this abomination of a castle, and my parents had been forced to become back-alley merchants. They’d sold everything—our farming tools, our animals, even the very clothes off their backs to cobble together enough money for a traveling wagon. And so we had begun a very painful, difficult life on the road. Besieged by high taxes, highway bandits, wild animals, and suspicious villagers, my parents had somehow managed to grow our humble little business into a thriving empire—but it had cost them dearly. Their youth, their health, their joie de vivre.

And even though we had more power and wealth than we could have ever dreamed of, I knew that if the Crown had given them a choice, they would have chosen to stay on our land. They would have wanted to stay a humble family of farmers.

Hot pinpricks pressed against my lids. Knowing I might lose all control if I stayed here a moment longer, I excused myself from dinner and hurried out of the room.

Instead of going back to my chambers, I headed for the valet quarters, hoping to run into Tomas. If my grand plan to get my family’s land back was going to work, I would need his full cooperation.

But instead of finding my hot valet, I stumbled upon his adorable daughter instead. The small blonde girl was sitting all alone at her purple table, balancing a beautiful china teapot in her tiny hands. She was pouring tea for a stuffed duck and a teddy bear, both of which kept slipping off their chairs. It was the saddest tea party I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help it. I had to intervene.

“Do you have room for another guest?”

Lucy stared at me skeptically. “I don’t know…”

I sat down in the one empty seat unoccupied by Lucy and the dolls, picked up a cup, and slurped the ice-cold tea in it with all the grace of a barnyard hog. Her jaw dropped all the way to the ground.

“You don’t drink tea like that!”

“Says who?” I shot back.

“Says Daddy! Daddy says ladies drink tea with their pinkies up! Like this!” She drank her own tea with such proper form even the marchioness would have been proud.

“Like this?” I poured myself another cup of tea, swigged the whole thing in one go, and let out an almighty burp. Lucy let out a gleeful cackle, then slapped her hand over her face, her eyes wide.

“You’re weird,” she said with the frankness of an innocent child.

“How so?”

“Most people don’t treat me like I’m normal.”

My heart twisted for this solemn-eyed little girl. “Now that’s weird.”

It was her turn to frown, confused. “Why?”

“Because you are normal.”

She smiled a little and poured me another cup of tea.

As casually as I could, I asked, “So what’s a perfectly normal lady like you doing all by yourself in here?”

“I’m sick, and my daddy is out finding a cure for me.” She said it very matter-of-factly, as if she was talking about the weather and not a disease that might kill her. “He’s going to find it too. There’s nothing my daddy wouldn’t do for me.”

“Your daddy? Who’s he?”

“He’s tall and handsome, with dark hair. He works in the palace!”

Tomas, then. So she didn’t think of Bennett as her father—or maybe she wasn’t even aware that Tomas wasn’t her biological dad.

“There he is right now!”

I turned around, narrowly managing to swallow my gasp of surprise. I hadn’t expected him to come back so soon.

Tomas looked as sexy as ever, his vest unbuttoned, his shirt hanging open so I could see the barest glimpse of his muscled chest. His hair was rumpled from a day of hard work, but his eyes…his eyes were hard in a way I’d never seen before.

“Darling, who’s your new friend?” he asked.

“Dunno!” She shrugged her shoulders. “She’s my new tea party pal!”

“Oh, in that case…tea party pal, do you mind coming with me for a moment?”

I followed him into the hall. He immediately turned on me, his mouth set in an accusing line. “What are you doing here?”

I smiled coyly. “Visiting your daughter, of course.”

His eyes widened. A small gasp of surprise escaped his lips. “How did you know that?”

I shrugged, playing my cards close to my chest. I refused to give him any more details than that.

He sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He seemed a little on edge after his massive blowup with Bennett, but that was fine. A discouraged man was simply a man in need of a good ol’ dose of feminine wiles. It was the perfect chance to soften him up for what I had planned next.