Love by the Morning Star (22 page)

Anna felt an unaccountable stab of jealousy and was suddenly determined that no force on earth would keep her from having the first dance with Teddy. She caught his arm again and almost dragged him to the floor.

“Really, I can't,” Teddy protested. “She's expecting it—it's tradition. If you were slaving away in a kitchen all day to feed other people, wouldn't you be pleased to be singled out one night of the year?”

From somewhere came the idea that she
had
almost been a kitchen servant, that she might have worked hard all these weeks and had nothing to look forward to but the chance to dress up and dance with the young lord before everyone's eyes. She quickly hushed that rebel thought.
I contrived that it should not happen that way. I put myself here, and I deserve to reap the rewards. Didn't I give him everything last night? And still I wait for those magic words:
Marry me.

She searched his eyes for some secret conspiracy of memory, some gratitude for the gift she'd given him in the hothouse. But though he looked at her with admiration, devotion, she saw only someone in love with her, not a lover. Did it mean nothing to him?

Teddy's brow was puckered in faint puzzlement, and then he caught his mother's disapproving stare over Anna's shoulder. Of course! He was so relieved, he raised his hand to the orchestra and swept his love into the opening waltz.

She was so different by daylight, speaking English with such a prim, controlled, artificial voice, that deliberate aristocratic accent that seemed to demand such effort—how far removed from her poetically beautiful German, which soared to Goethe and stooped to the gutter from word to word, language that played like a precocious child. Diurnal Anna was stiff and stilted, slightly uncomfortable. It was as if she was an entirely different person by day, and it troubled him.

But when he saw his mother's disapproving gaze, he realized—it was all an act. She was simply afraid of his mother, and while there was any chance the woman could observe her, Anna was desperate to paint herself as a model Englishwoman. She did things—said things—that his mother must approve of. Even when there was no danger of being overheard, she criticized servants, maintained a superior attitude that echoed Lady Liripip's, kept her manners above reproach. Why, even though she'd promised to go gloveless, she wore them now, no doubt at his mother's insistence.

Those hurtful little things she said, they were just hangovers from trying to placate his mother. How scared she must be, separated from her home, her country going haywire, her parents far away and in danger, with only his own unkind mother to lean upon. She must be in constant terror of being cast out on the streets, the poor girl! He knew that his mother—horrible as he admitted her to be—would not stoop so low. But Anna did not know it, and even if Lady Liripip let her stay, she could make Anna's life a torment.

Now that he thought about it, Anna was a spy. He himself was learning how to mask his feelings and alter his words to blend in. Burroughs and his fellow spymasters had rigorously drilled him in remaining impassive while disgusting things were said about all the many people the Nazis hated, because when he was there, he would have to pretend to agree with them all. He had listened to the filth and learned not to give away his real thoughts by so much as a twitch. He could pass as a Nazi, the thing most antithetical to his nature. Anna was doing her best to pass as the shallow, bigoted, selfish, narrow sort of woman his mother favored. And in the way of a real spy, it was necessary to keep up the act even when unobserved. He would never have fallen in love with the Anna he saw in daytime. Oh, he might have lusted after her, but never in a million years would he marry her.

What a beast I've been
, Teddy thought as he glided and whirled with that divine woman. He'd acted as if they had all the time in the world. Yet they'd only known each other, all told, for a few days. And tomorrow he must leave again. But he knew, absolutely and unequivocally, that he loved her. The nighttime her, the real her, not this daytime sham. Why wait? She should know how he felt and what he meant to do. He would propose tonight. He'd make his intentions absolutely clear so she didn't have to torture herself acting in that hateful way. His mother must have told her to dance with him first. She had always despised the Servants' Ball. Anna was afraid to defy her, and dragged Teddy onto the floor. He'd have to explain it to Sally, but she would understand. She could have the next two dances.

Once Anna knew that she was safe forever, she'd be herself again. Once she knew he meant to marry her, she could be her true self day and night. She could prattle in German, sing her glorious opera, say all of those things that would shock his mother, and no one could do a thing about it!

Tonight when they met at the yew, he would propose. Then in the morning, before he left again, he'd tell his mother.

He looked over at that formidable woman, mincing through the waltz with Coombe. He could not tell which of the two dancers looked the most uncomfortable. His mother's face was held in a strange, sour smile, that stiff one she plastered on for those she condescended to. The sapphires around her neck gave her an artificial sparkle that seemed as false as her smile. She was cross about that, too, he knew, the mysterious disappearance of her heirloom pearls that she'd told the ladies' maids to clean.

Looking at the fearsome face of the woman who bore him, the woman he had long since given up trying to love and never respected but still half feared, Teddy thought:
Maybe I'll tell her when I return to Starkers next time
. That would be in May, when he finished at Oxford. After that, he'd continue his spy training, and then if things went as planned, he'd be in Germany. Yes, right before he left the country would be a perfect time to tell his mother he was marrying Anna.

 

H
ANNAH CRANED HER NECK
over her shoulder, trying to see how very bad it was.

“I can't,” she said. “I simply can't!”

“You wear this or you wear your kitchen dress,” Waltraud said sternly, adjusting the fabric on Hannah's slight curves.

“I could wear my traveling suit.”

“No, you can't, because prophetess that I am, I snipped the buttons off to prevent that very thing. I knew you'd be a coward at the last minute. You've done the talking—now you have to put your body to work.”

“Such as it is,” Hannah said, looking at her rather flat front.

“Fried eggs are as delicious as melons,” Waltraud insisted. “You want a proposal? You'll get it in this dress.”

“I don't need a proposal. He loves me; that is enough.”

“It's not the right kind of love if you're his secret. A boy who feeds a hedgehog in the garden doesn't have a pet. Do you want to be Teddy's wife or his mistress?”

“I just want to talk with him, and laugh with him, and
know
him—forever.”

“A mistress isn't forever,
Liebchen
. Thank goodness, for me, because I get bored in about ten minutes and then I get my farewell dress and go on the prowl again. That suits me. But you are not a mistress, love. You are a wife. A dear little
Hausfrau
with a herd of children and the ability to tell your mother-in-law to go to hell. Now be a man and go out there. The first dance is ending, and he'll be waiting for you.”

Waltraud settled the ropes and ropes of pearls and gave her a little shove.

“Opening night at Cabaret Starkers,” she said. “You're on.”

H
ANNAH DID NOT MAKE AN ENTRANCE
. She appeared with stealthy suddenness, like a ghost, or a fox, and was with the rest before they knew it. Servants, of course, come in through the back stairs.

When walking in the gloaming, one does not immediately notice the first star. So Hannah came among them, unremarked at first, but before long eliciting whispers and gasps. Lord Liripip, limping his way through a mockery of a dance with Mrs. Wilcox, stopped dead still and thought,
If that girl does not find a royal keeper tonight I'll eat my hat
. His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, known to Hannah as Georgie, downed his cocktail and began to weave his way toward her, his eyes bright. His tastes were as varied as Waltraud's, but at that very moment he could think of no man or woman more exciting than this girl of night and moonlight.

“Who is she?” voices asked, and no one had the answer. Was she an actress, with those expressive brows, that Lilith look, that serpent grace? Was she one of those royals no one seems to remember, a Greek or a Swede? An upstart jeweler's daughter with those yards and yards of pearls?

Teddy stepped on Anna's toe and stopped dancing. He did not mean to stare. He was with the woman he adored, and if he recognized the transformed creature as the little German kitchen waif who had briefly amused him before, that was no reason to utterly forget—for the space of only a few seconds, mind you—about the woman whom he planned to make his fiancée very soon. But he simply could not help himself. If it was put to a poll, Anna would be voted the most beautiful woman in the room by a landslide. But the kitchen maid in her remarkable dress and those pearls was by far the most interesting.

When Waltraud had worn the dress, once, to privately entertain a visiting diplomat, she wore it right way around, so the Grecian draping plunged daringly down below her navel, requiring perfect posture or absolute indifference as to who might see one's bosom, both of which Waltraud had in abundance. But she knew her little friend did not possess such aplomb, so after pondering the dilemma awhile, she simply reversed the garment, lopped off the bottom, took a few stitches,
et voilà!

It was a Vionnet dress, deeply black, bias cut, draped in supple waves. In the front it was virginal, showing no more than a glimpse of those delicate hollows above the collarbones, and from there descending to the floor. But in the back . . .

The flowing wavelike folds skimmed Hannah's shoulder blades and dropped to the first curve of her buttocks so enticingly that every man pleaded for one more inch of flesh—just one! But the bare expanse of creamy back wasn't stark against the black material. She wore three long strands of pearls reversed, so that in front they looked like a choker, while in back they rolled across her naked skin in a precious veil, concealing, revealing, and concealing again. Two heavy ropes were wrapped around her forearms, and another, more delicate, made a headband on her short dark hair.

Hannah did not see the way the entire room looked at her. She saw only Teddy.

She was confused when she saw who was in his arms, because Waltraud had been adamant that Teddy would dance first with the cook. She had heard the waltz begin, and only now was it ending. Sally was standing morosely against the wall. Why was Teddy with Anna?

She called out to him wordlessly across the crowded ballroom, and for a moment he answered with a yearning look of his own. But then the golden woman in his arms said something and he turned his gaze away from Hannah. He didn't look back, not for a wink or a smile.

You were wrong, Traudl
, Hannah thought.
Even this dress is not enough to make him run to me before his mother and all the world
.

She wanted to flee, to cover her exposed flesh and take off the ridiculous, glorious dress that was not her at all. But the second dance?
Surely he will come to me for the second dance
.

No. He didn't look at her at all, but left Anna in the care of his friend Maurice and then pulled Sally into the Sir Roger de Coverley. Hannah watched the sprightly country dance and wondered when her turn would come.

“You are not accustomed to being against the wall,” said an insinuating growl from behind her ear. “Or . . . perhaps you are?”

She turned and found the handsome Duke of Kent lurking at her side.

“Forgive my coarseness. Liripip has been stimulating my imagination with his memoirs. Are you really the sleepy little kitchen wench who knew Noel? What hidden . . . depths.” He peered down her back to see them. “Liripip says, in his usual brusque way, that you are in want of a patron. Shall we dance and talk? I require conversation, intelligent and incessant, during even the most arduous activities, so this will be a test. Not a reel, though. Something more intimate. Stay here, and if anyone tries to steal you away while I'm gone, I'll consider it treason.”

He had a word with the conductor of the small, versatile orchestra, and when Roger de Coverley spun to a close, the horns immediately struck up a swinging jazz tune.

It was impossible to worry when dancing. In the first number, an easy shag, Hannah was able to keep up a panting conversation of double entendres.

“My wife, Marina, won't object too strongly,” he said after sufficient repartee, thinking he'd made himself abundantly clear. “We have an understanding, and get along swimmingly.”

“She doesn't like opera singers?” Hannah asked.

“Or chorus girls, or chorus boys, but as long as we keep our peccadilloes discreet we are all happy.”

Hannah smiled up at him. “Is opera a peccadillo in this country?”

“No, but the singers are, if they're kept in secret apartments and drive little coupes. Or would you prefer a Rolls and chauffeur? The royal treasury can support it, and if not, last season all of my horses placed, so I'm flush.”

Still not understanding, she said, “Are you always so kind to your protégés? You haven't even seen me perform.”

“What you don't know I can teach you. My tastes are simple. Well, broad but shallow, I should say.” He let his hand run down to the small of her back.

“You can teach me opera?” Hannah asked, incredulous. “I never knew you sang.”

“Teach you . . . oh, good lord, have I put my foot in it?”

“I don't know. What were you talking about?”