‘You’ve enough on your plate, man, getting yourself off to the liner. I’ve made other arrangements for Wentworth.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Foxton was all smiles. The princess was all smiles. She even leaned forward and pecked at each of Lily’s cheeks in welcome while she held her hands.
‘How simply delightful to see you again, my dear Lily! This is not too late — or too early — to join me in a pot of chocolate? I was just about to indulge … Good.’ She turned to the maid. ‘And we’ll have French macaroons with that, Katy.’
There was a trace of something … roses, Lily thought … in the air. The princess had smelled of nothing more than Pear’s soap when she approached. So, Lily guessed, it was reasonable to suppose that Anna Petrovna had until a moment ago been in the morning room conferring with Princess Ratziatinsky. Her hostess was in receiving mode but at leisure in a purple Circassian kaftan. Lily’s own white linen dress, borrowed at the last minute from her aunt Phyl, would pass muster, she thought. Restrained, unlikely to attract attention.
They chatted of this and that as the maid poured out the chocolate and handed macaroons and shortcake biscuits. When she bobbed and left, the princess’s tone became brisk.
‘So. You come, the commander tells me, equipped with olive branch, white flag … something of that nature?’
Lily laughed. ‘It’s more of a message in a cleft stick.’ She was determined to keep the business light. She had chosen to bring her documents with her in a battered old military messenger’s pouch she had been given by her soldier grandfather. ‘This bag,’ she said with an air of mystery, ‘was once the property of the Royal West Surrey Regiment. It carried the news of the relief of the siege of Ladysmith. It is still doing its bit.’
The princess smiled. ‘Coming to the relief of besieged ladies?’
‘Yes, that. But its main purpose is, as it always was, to serve its country. I know you understand that.’