“I did not doubt her for an instant,” she said. “I have been such a fool.”
“Yes, you have,” Wilhelm said, “for it is I who invented the countess with the express purpose of getting the letters back. When you refused to give them to me, I was forced to adopt other methods.”
“For hours I have have been consumed with panic, searching for them! How could you let me think some miscreant had taken them?” she asked. “You, sir, are not a gentleman.”
“I am gentleman enough to destroy them rather than let either of you be exposed. You should thank me for the kindness, now that you find yourself in the same precarious situation as my father, the king.”
“Good morning, Princess Anna Elisabeth Victoria.” A wisp of a boy in an ulster bobbed a bow as he passed them in front of the hotel.
“Who is that boy?” the princess asked. “His voice is familiar to me.”
“No one of consequence, I am sure,” Wilhelm said. “I am afraid I have not time to stand here and comfort you over your loss. Good day, Princess.”
“You were the boy?” Wilhelm was standing in front of her in her dressing room, disbelief on his face.
“The evidence is before you, is it not?” Irene said, slipping the ulster from her shoulders. “I could not resist one last disguise.”
“I still do not understand why you had me tell her the truth. I would prefer her not to think I had a role in this business.”
Irene shrugged. “It would have been cruel to let her spend the rest of her life worrying that the letters might be made public by some unknown thief. She knows you will not compromise your father’s reputation, but it was important for her to have experienced the fear of exposure,” Irene said. “She was terrified her own husband might learn of the affair. That was the emotion consuming her when she came to you, and it is a feeling she will not soon forget.”
“I wish she did not know I was behind the theft.”
“She now considers you to be a man with whom one must not trifle.”
Wilhelm crossed his arms and frowned. “You frighten me, my dear. It is an emotion I do not often feel. I should not like to find myself on the wrong side of you. I shudder at the thought of what you might do.”
“Why ever would you find yourself in such a situation?” She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away and looked down and studied his tall boots. “You know I adore you, Sigi.”
“What a queen you would make, Irene. Your wit, your intelligence, your beauty,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Yet it can never be so, can it?”
“Kings can do what they wish.”
“Crown princes cannot.”
“A crown prince could wait until he became king.” Her voice broke, just a bit as she began, for the first time, to doubt him.
“I did love you,” he said, his lips in a hard line. “It was a lapse in judgment and must be stopped. Crown princes do not permanently ally themselves with girls from the opera. It simply isn’t done.”
“I did not ask you to make me your queen.” Irene stepped back from him, aghast.
“I cannot risk that someday you might.” He turned away from her and started for the door.
“So this is to be our parting?” she asked, blanching. She had not expected the loss of him to cut so close.
“It cannot be any other way. How could I ever trust a woman like you? I have just watched you deceive, with shocking ease, a respectable woman.”
“I did it to help you!”
“Someday you might turn on me,” he said. “I required your assistance, and you gave it—brilliantly. Now that I know what you are capable of, I must never see you again.”
“I did not expect cruelty from you.” She spat the words.
“I never thought I would give it, especially to you.” He silently contemplated how easily it had come to him; perhaps he ought not to have rejected it as a useful tool. “Yet I do not think anything else capable of so well severing our ties. I will always think fondly of our time together, Irene.”
“I shall endeavor to do the same, painful though it will be.” She crossed to her dressing table, upon which the cabinet photograph of the two of them stood, and reached for it. He was gone before she could pick it up and hand it to him. Her heart ached as she looked at the image, taken when they had been so very happy. She would have given it to him, if only to save him from the worry his father had felt knowing his letters might be made public at any time. She had misjudged the prince, taken him for a burly sort of good-hearted barbarian rather than a calculating royal concerned only with his narrow bit of the world.