Clover, flaring pink with indignation, stormed into the library with a steaming kettle of ginger tea and a teacup, and set them both hard on the King’s desk.
“You,” she said. “You—you—you—you drink this! At once!”
Clover was so very rarely angry that this was both amusing and frightening. Fairweller paused in his paperwork and blinked at her, which made Clover even angrier.
“Three cups,” she said, pouring the tea and thrusting it into his hands. “Three cups, at least! Have you seen the doctor? Well? Drink it!”
Fairweller drank.
He was not used to being ordered about, Azalea supposed. He lived alone in his austere manor. Clover folded her arms and watched him with pursed lips as he meekly sipped the tea. He almost looked like a frightened schoolboy. The girls watched from the doorway of the library.
“Will the King be home soon, Minister?” said Flora, the first to dare a question. She raised a finger, as though she were in lessons.
“He should arrive within three weeks,” said Fairweller, smelling the tea and cringing. “He remained behind to see to the regiments. If you had written him, you would have known this already.”
The girls flared up with indignation.
“We haven’t written him?” said Bramble, her ears red. “He hasn’t written us!”
“Yes.” Fairweller took a sip of the strong-smelling tea. “Your family is very interesting.”
Fairweller wasn’t the only gentleman to arrive. Several days later, among the exciting come-and-go of Royal Business, Azalea followed humming noises, and discovered a tall, thin young gentleman in the portrait gallery. He had his hands shoved in his pockets, and he bobbed on the balls of his feet.
The portrait gallery was a long hall, with windows along one side and oil paintings along the other. It was a hall reserved for visitors and guests, with sofas so fine that if one sneezed ten paces away, they would stain. The girls weren’t allowed to touch them. Velvet ropes blocked glass cases of government documents, standing on pedestals in the middle of the room. The gentleman, next to one of them, caught sight of Azalea, and he brightened.
“Oh, hulloa!” he said, in a strong Delchastrian accent. “I say! Hulloa!”
“Hu—I mean, hello,” said Azalea. He reminded her of a long, stretchy piece of taffy wearing a checkered waistcoat. She stared at his offensively green bow tie.
“I say! Are you the princesses?” He beamed as Clover, Delphinium, and all the younger girls arrived behind Azalea. “I’ve heard stories! Spiffing to meet you, just spiffing!” He strode to Azalea, grasped her hand, and shook it vigorously, as though she was a gentleman.
The younger girls giggled and whispered to one another behind their hands. Azalea pushed a smile and tugged her hand away, feeling slightly defeminized.
Bramble arrived at the gallery door, pink cheeked, her thin lips turned in a grin. Several pins had fallen out of her deep red hair, giving it a slightly tumbled appearance. She worked to pin a strand back.
The gentleman’s eyes caught her, and his smile faded.
“I say,” he said.
Bramble’s grin disappeared when she spotted the gangly fellow.
“Who the devil are you?” she said.
“Um, Lord Teddie,” he said, scrunching his hat rim between his fingers. “Um, our mothers were chums. They did watercolor together. Ages ago. They were like sisters. So, that, you know, makes us, um, cousins. Um. Except, actually, we’re not.”
Bramble’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, so you’re Lord Haftenravenscher,” she said.
Lord Teddie beamed. “Oh, well done,” he said. “You said it right. Except everyone calls me Lord Teddie, Haftenravenscher is such a mouthful, I know it is. So you can call me Lord Teddie. Rolls off the tongue. Teddie Teddie! Haha.”
“We’re not allowed visitors in mourning,” said Bramble. “Especially those who think they’re on holiday.”
Her tone was so cold, it made the smile slide from Lord Teddie’s face. Instantly, however, it was back, and accompanied with a bounciness to his feet.
“Oh, I’m not visiting!” he said. “Strictly R.B., that’s me! Ha! Rhyme. I say, is this one your mother?”
He waved his hat to the small picture of Mother hanging on the wall. The Wentworth family only owned one portrait of her, painted when Azalea was little. They hadn’t had the money to commission a conservatory painter, and so had gotten something that sort of looked like Mother, if you squinted and turned your head. Azalea was surprised the King hadn’t locked it away. Every other stitch of dress, jewelry, and hair comb had been locked in trunks, then locked again in Mother’s room.
Lord Teddie peered at the portrait through squinted eyes.
“It sort of looks like her,” he said. “But it hasn’t got zing. The light. In her eyes.”
Azalea tilted her head, nonplussed. The girls cast one another glances.
“You knew her?” said Eve.
“Oh, great muffins,” he said, bouncing up and down again. “Everyone knew your mother. I knew her before she boffed off to Eathesbury! Met her at one of Mother’s balls. She taught me a bit of the Entwine, you know. I was five.”
“You were five?” cried Hollyhock, tugging at his hand. “You weren’t of age and they let you go to a ball?”
“Crumbs, yes! Best way to learn how to dance, I say!”
The younger girls crowded about Lord Teddie, hopping with eagerness. Azalea groaned inwardly, thinking of the headache she would have explaining to the girls that they still wouldn’t be allowed at balls until they were fifteen.