‘We’d be impersonating royalty,’ Elidh reminded him once again. It was so easy to overlook that one detail amid all the madness surrounding it.
‘If you think anyone going to the party is really being themselves, you’re more naive than I thought.’ Her father frowned. ‘Those guests might bring their own names, but they’ll be impersonating their better selves and leaving their real selves at home. Those sorts always do.’
‘Then I pity this poor Sutton Keynes,’ Elidh said defiantly. ‘He has to choose from a room full of frauds and that’s no choice at all. If he chose me, I’d be no different than them, a false front for someone he doesn’t really know.’
‘You see!’ her father crowed. ‘No different. That’s what I’ve been saying. We’re just levelling the playing pitch. We’d be no different than anyone else there.’
‘If you’re right, he’ll fall in love with a princess.’
‘If I’m right, he’ll fall in love with you.’
Elidh studied the newspaper. ‘If you’re right, I’ll cost him his fortune. He would hate me for it. Saving his fortune is the whole motive behind his party.’ All the more reason her father’s idea was the height of madness. This Sutton Keynes couldn’t afford her.
Her father’s features softened and he looked at her gently. ‘A man who chooses money over my daughter isn’t the right man for her. It’s the classic quandary, isn’t it? Love or money? It’s the stuff playwrights dream of.’ Her father sighed happily, already imagining a hundred plots he would never write.
Long shadows filled the room. Elidh moved to light their candle stubs. She stopped to open the window and put out a dusting of breadcrumbs for the birds who gathered on the little sill. If she didn’t go with him, she feared he’d go alone and goodness knew the trouble he’d get into without her.
‘What’s the worst that can happen if we try?’ he cajoled as she worked about the room.
Elidh paused and looked up from the candles. ‘We end up in Newgate? Fraud is a crime.’ They’d be committing it on so many levels.
Her father looked thoughtful, hands folded across his stomach. She thought she might have reached him at last. ‘We might end up there or somewhere like it anyway if we do nothing. If we stay the course, we are certainly doomed, Daughter, for the workhouse, for the streets.’ He shook his head. ‘We have nothing to lose as it is. We have to try. It’s all we have left. Your mother would expect it of us. She wouldn’t want us to give up.’
Her mother wouldn’t want them defrauding an innocent man either. Elidh was sure of that. Well, fairly sure of that.
He met her gaze sombrely. ‘I haven’t anything left to give you but this one chance. I couldn’t save your mother, I couldn’t save the troupe, but maybe I can save you. Win this man’s heart and you will have your freedom from penury. You will have a life of luxury I could never give you.’ He paused, his eyes watering suspiciously. ‘I’m not getting any younger. Last winter showed us both that. I want to know you’re taken care of.’ It was a lovely little monologue. Was he the actor in these moments or her father? It was so hard to tell. When she was little, she’d loved watching her parents on stage, playing out a scene from her father’s latest work: her mother so beautiful and blonde, her father darkly handsome and intense. Even now, he could still deliver a speech with enough pathos to bring an audience to tears, even if it was only an audience of one.
‘Don’t talk like that, Father.’ She couldn’t bear the reality of his words. Elidh busied herself putting away her mother’s costumes. Her father had nearly died last winter with a terrible cough that had lingered for months in his chest. What would happen if he took sick again this winter? What would happen if she lost him? He was all she had left. The thought was untenable.
It was a classic quandary indeed. What would she do for love? Would she risk it all on her father’s mad plan? Not out of love for an unseen man with a fortune, but out of love for her father. She would risk for him what she would not risk for herself. But how best to do it? If her mother were here, she’d say to find the middle ground, that there were always more than two options to any dilemma.
Elidh put the last dress away, carefully tucking it into its tissues, her mind searching for that middle ground. She didn’t have to win the bachelor’s hand. She simply had to help her father secure a patron; if they could do that, perhaps it would prevent him from passing off fake jewellery as stakes at the tables. It seemed the best option. A patron’s support would be enough to get them through the winter. She would worry about spring when it came. What harm could there be in the masquerade? It only had to last two weeks. Then the Principessa Chiara Balare di Fossano could disappear for good and no one would be the wiser. She turned to face her father. ‘When do we leave?’
‘In four days.’
Elidh nodded. ‘You’d better call on Rosie, then. We have a lot of sewing to do.’ It was a plan with flaws and consequences even if they succeeded, but she’d worry about that later, when and if they appeared. Now, she knew what she’d do for love and how far she’d go. All the way to Newmarket, apparently.
Four days later, Principessa Chiara Balare di Fossano, accompanied by her maid and her father, Prince Lorenzo, stepped down from the hack that had driven them from the station in Newmarket, on to the hallowed grounds of Hartswood. Elidh had never been more nervous in her life. Perhaps it was fitting. This scheme was more outrageous than any other her father had cooked up. It was only right she should be more nervous. There was more to lose.
The concept of ‘more’ followed her everywhere like an unwanted stray. Her father was more audacious than he’d ever been, not only using their precious rent money for the carriage ride that took them from the station on All Saints to the estate, but he’d also purchased first-class accommodations for the journey from London and proudly introduced himself as Prince Lorenzo whenever asked. He reasoned no one would believe in a prince who travelled third class. If anyone made note of their arrival, he wanted to be prepared on all fronts. Elidh hoped they didn’t regret the expenditure later.
Looking up at the sandstone façade of Hartswood, it appeared the audacity and luxury didn’t end with her father. The estate was more opulent than anything Elidh had ever seen in England. That luxury was evident from the first turn into the long drive, featuring perfectly manicured lawns and leafy green trees overhead through which the sun filtered so artfully one had to wonder if the trees had been planted deliberately to get the effect. The circle at the end of the drive continued the theme, welcoming guests with an Italian fountain that burbled coolly in its centre while two sandstone staircases flanked the rising entrance to the double front doors of the estate, an elegant mix of English baroque and Italianate architecture.
The luxury didn’t end there. Grooms had leapt to take the horses’ heads as soon as the driver halted. A footman’s hand had waited to help her down, his head respectfully inclined. There was no moment for hesitation or uncertainty on her part. Nerves or not, she was immediately ‘on stage’, immediately immersed into her role as the Princess, and no one assumed otherwise. Perhaps her father was right. People saw what they expected to see. Certainly, none of the servants suspected otherwise.
A maid was present to guide them up the staircases to the wide, cool, white-marbled entrance hall, through the house and out to the afternoon comfort of the back terrace. The walk itself was subtly orchestrated to show a guest the level of opulence they’d stepped into. Perhaps it was meant to remind everyone that despite the lack of a title, the Keynes family was not without funds. It seemed she was not the only one with something to