excitedly in one hand. ‘I’ve found it, Elidh! This will be the making of us!’ He thrust the paper at her. ‘Read!’
Elidh took the newspaper hesitantly. It was fresh, newly printed. She thought of the coin that had been spent on this luxury, precious shillings that could have been hoarded against the inevitable. She scanned the page her father had folded back. Her brow furrowed. It was the society page. Gossip, all of it, most of it about a Sutton Keynes and his newly acquired fortune. The reported amount staggered her. Just moments ago, she’d been thinking a hundred pounds a year would be heavenly. Lucky him. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with us.’ She passed the paper back to her father.
‘Don’t you see, Daughter? The bloke needs to marry, quickly, or his fortune is forfeit. He’s holding a house party to find a bride. Anyone is welcome.’
A tremor of angst rippled through Elidh. What was he planning? Her father couldn’t possibly be thinking of going? Of passing her off as bride material? Had he looked at her recently? She was plain: blonde hair, nondescript eyes that vacillated between hazel and brown. The most interesting thing about her was her name. A man who could pick anyone would definitely not choose her. He probably wouldn’t even notice her. She took back the newspaper, scanning it once more. ‘Anyone who fits the standards, Father,’ she corrected, feeling more confident she could scrap his airy plans. ‘He needs a woman with a title.’ There was nothing her father could do about that. There wasn’t a title anywhere in their family tree. He was a playwright, her mother an actress.
‘Then we’ll make one.’ Her father turned about the room, dancing with his imagination. He snapped his fingers, inspiration finding him. ‘I know—you will be an Italian principessa! Where is my map of Italy?’ He opened one of the trunks crowded into their small space, doubling as storage and furniture. The scent of cedar filled the air as he rummaged. ‘Ah, here it is.’ He shut the lid and unrolled the map, reaching for a mug and a plate to anchor the sides.
‘Father, what are you doing?’ Elidh crossed the room cautiously, fearfully even. She hoped she hadn’t understood him aright. ‘I can’t be an Italian principessa.’ Surely he wasn’t thinking they’d impersonate royalty?
His finger stopped at a spot of the map. ‘There—Fossano. You can be the Principessa of Fossano. Now, let me see. You need a name.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Chiara di Fossano. Principessa Chiara Balare di Fossano. I think that has a nice ring to it.’
Elidh grabbed for the map and rolled it up in a fury. ‘Stop! This is nonsense. You want me to impersonate an Italian princess?’ There’d been schemes before, little scams on the road when the troupe had been short on coin, but nothing like this. This was madness even for him.
‘It’s not really impersonation, Elidh. I don’t think Chiara Balare actually exists,’ her father reasoned as if creating a fiction was somehow better than pretending to be someone else.
‘That’s not the point.’ Elidh lifted the trunk and put the map away. She wished she could put her father’s ideas away as easily.
‘What is the point, my dear? This man needs a wife to claim his fortune and we need a fortune.’ For a moment, the light left her father’s dark eyes. They were sober and sad. ‘Don’t you think I know how close we are to the edge? This time, we might very well fall off.’ He took her hands and turned them over, surveying her palms. ‘Thank goodness you haven’t stooped to doing other people’s laundry. Your hands aren’t ruined. It would give you away immediately.’
Elidh sighed, summoning her patience. How like her father. Serious one minute and back to his schemes the next. It had been an enchanting quality in her childhood. It had made every day part-adventure, part-fairy tale. Her world had been magical. It wasn’t any more. The enchantment had worn off long ago, leaving the realities of poverty and hopelessness in its wake. It was up to her to be the voice of reason. She took her father’s hands and led him to a trunk. ‘We have to think about this logically. To start, the premise is madness. You want us to infiltrate a party for nobles and impersonate Italian royalty.’ Couldn’t he hear the preposterousness of his own suggestion? What he proposed was impossible.
‘We’ve done such things before, Elidh,’ her father chided as if she was somehow in the wrong. ‘Do you remember the time your mother and I pretended to be an English lord and lady on a Grand Tour whose carriage had broken down?’
‘Yes, of course I remember,’ Elidh cut him off swiftly with a polite smile. If he got to talking about the old times, there’d be no reasoning with him. ‘But that was different. That was just for one night and it was for a free meal.’ Her father had promised to pay once their luggage had been retrieved, which it never was, and they’d scampered out of the inn before dawn to avoid detection. ‘This is about trapping a man into marriage.’ There were so many things wrong with the idea, she couldn’t begin to put them into words. She began with the most obvious. ‘He’ll be swarmed by women who are actually eligible for the honour. The odds are firmly against us, even if we were legitimately titled. We can’t risk so much on a gamble we have no hope of winning. He wouldn’t look twice at me and, if he did, he’d look straight through me and know. I haven’t the demeanour.’
‘The demeanour, bah! Do you remember when we toured Italy, Daughter? We played all the places—Naples, Florence, Rome, Turin, Milan.’ She didn’t have the heart to correct him. They had played those places. But not on the big city stages. The troupe had roamed in their caravan through the countryside, playing for various conti and duchi at their summer villas.
‘I remember.’ She remembered the warm nights, the lights in the darkness, the food, the wine. Her mother’s laughter as she charmed the noblemen. Those were good times when she was innocent and thought they were untouchable. She wasn’t so innocent any more.
‘You spent the summer in Italy with nobles, you were sixteen then. You managed beautifully. It will come back to you and, if you make a mistake, you shrug and you say “it is different in Italy.” Being foreign will cover a multitude of sins.’
‘But not a lack of clothing.’ Even if she could pull off the mannerisms, her wardrobe would give her away.
‘Nonsense. We have your mother’s costumes.’ Her father rose and moved about the room, flipping open trunks as he went, pulling out gown after gown in a whirlwind of silks and satins emerging from their tissue wrappings until the little room was a harem of colours, rich and lush, at odds with the grey pallor of the walls. ‘This one should do for an evening gown, there used to be a tiara that went with it.’ He rummaged deep into the trunks. Out came the velvet sacks of paste jewels and headpieces. They winked and twinkled in the gloom, looking exquisite at a distance. Looking real. ‘Rosie can help you alter them. She is still in Upper Clapton living with a sister. She can help us with costumes and maid duties. She played one often enough on stage, she should be an expert.’ Rosie had been her mother’s dresser and had played a maid both off and on stage.
Elidh was truly worried now. If her father was willing to alter her mother’s sacred costumes, he must be desperate indeed, all that more committed to his latest scheme. When he had an idea, he clung to it with tenacity. It would make her job of persuading him that much harder. ‘Father,’ she warned, ‘we’ll never get away with it.’ Perhaps the best way to reason with him was to play along, to pose obstacles carefully veiled as questions. ‘I don’t speak Italian, not much of it anyway.’
‘No one else does either. They will compliment you on your English. Your accent was flawless when you played Juliet on stage in Tuscany that one summer,’ her father said encouragingly, his eyes lighting again as he thought of the past. He held out his arms in an expansive gesture and turned about the room. ‘Everything
