My dear cousin, the Grand Duke Aleksey, is getting married today,” said the Countess von Loffler-Lisch—more affectionately known as Aunt Ploni, short for Appolonia. She was a second cousin of Camden's mother and had come all the way from Nice to attend his wedding. “I hear the bride is some gold-digging nobody.”
He would be called that very same if he didn't stand in direct line of succession to a ducal title, Camden thought wryly. Instead, Gigi would bear the brunt of the snickering their hasty marriage was certain to engender, for her feats of social mountaineering.
“Your noble cousin's wedding would have been the grander affair,” said Camden.
“Very likely.” The elderly countess nodded, her hair a rare shade of pure silver and elaborately coiffed. “Zut! I can't recall the bride's name. Elenora von Schellersheim? Von Scheffer-Boyadel? Or is her name not even Elenora?”
Camden smiled. Aunt Ploni was known for her prodigious memory. It must gall her to no end not remembering something right at the tip of her tongue.
He sat down next to her and poured more cura?ao into her digestif glass. “Where is the bride from?”
“Somewhere on the border with Poland, I think.”
“We know some people from there,” he said. Theodora, for one.
The countess frowned and tried to concentrate amid the lively conversation flowing in the great drawing room at Twelve Pillars. Thirty of Camden's relatives had arrived from the Continent to attend the wedding, despite the short notice. And his mother was ever so pleased to finally be able to receive people in a mansion, however neglected, of her own.
“Von Schweinfurt?” Aunt Ploni refused to give up. “I do hate growing old. I never forgot a name when I was younger. Let's see. Von Schwanwisch?”
“Von Schnurbein? Von Schottenstein?” Camden teased her. He was in a buoyant mood. Tomorrow this time he would be getting married to the most remarkable girl he'd ever met. And tomorrow night—
“Von Schweppenburg!” the countess exclaimed. “There, that's it! Haven't quite lost all my marbles after all.”
“Von Schweppenburg?” He'd accidentally electrocuted himself once during an experiment at the Polytechnique. He felt exactly the same shock in his fingertips now. “You mean Count Georg von Schweppenburg's widow?”
“Dear me, not quite that bad. His daughter. Theodora, that's her name, not Elenora, after all. Poor Alesha is quite smitten.”
Something droned in the back of his head, an incipient alarm that he tried to dismiss. Titles that had their origins during the Holy Roman Empire went on in perpetuity to all male issue. There could very well be another late Count Georg, from a lateral branch of the von Schweppenburg family, who had a marriageable daughter named Theodora.
But what were the chances? No, they were speaking of his Theodora here, the one whose happiness he had once hoped to secure. But how? How could she marry two men in one month? The simple answer was that she couldn't. Either the countess was wrong or Theodora herself was wrong. A laughable choice, really. Of course Theodora would know the name of the man she was going to marry. The countess had to be mistaken.
“I met her years ago, when we were in Peters,” he said carefully. “I thought she married some Polish prince.”
The countess snorted. “Now, wouldn't that be interesting, a real live bigamist? Unfortunately, I've no hope for it. According to Alesha, his intended is as pure as the arctic ice field, with a mother who watches her every move. You must be mistaken, my boy.”
The clamor in his head escalated. He poured a goblet full of the digestif and downed it in one long gulp. The cognac at the base of the liqueur burned in his throat, but the sensation barely registered.
“It's only two o'clock in the afternoon. A bit early to be doing your last bout of bachelor drinking, eh?” cackled Aunt Ploni. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”
He wouldn't know if his feet were cold. He couldn't feel any of his limbs. The only thing he felt was confusion and a rising sense of peril, as if the solid ground beneath him had suddenly splintered, cracking dark webs of fissure and fracture as far as he could see.
He rose and bowed to the countess. “Hardly. But I do beg your pardon, noble cousin. There is a small matter that requires my attention. I hope to see you again at dinner.”
Camden couldn't think any better away from the drawing room. He wandered the silent, drafty corridors as bits and pieces of what Aunt Ploni had said streaked about in his head like panicky hens facing a weasel invasion.
He didn't exactly understand why, but he was scared witless. What frightened him most was that he knew, deep in his guts, that Aunt Ploni had not been mistaken.