As the horns announced the start of the banquet, Isabella stood cloaked in shadows beneath the colonnade. Her modified gown was a scandal in silk—plunging neckline to the fourth rib, high slit to the thigh, where her garter held a hidden dining knife—Richard's gift, he'd said, "for ornament."
"You look..." Lily struggled for words, "like Morgan le Fay luring knights to their doom."
Isabella was about to retort when harp music floated from the hall. The melody struck her like a ghost—Cambridge's Christmas carol, the very tune her senior once played for her alone in the library...
"Your Grace?" The corpulent Flemish envoy blocked her path, his accent thick. "Duke Winston sends his regards—he had not yet received news of your... passing."
Swirling her wine, Isabella smirked. "Tell my father I'll leave him something in the will..." Her voice trailed off. Across the hall, Alfred spoke with a black-haired youth. The moment the young man turned, her hand nearly dropped the goblet—his face was identical to her senior's.
"That is Princess Yekaterina's captain of the guard," the envoy supplied. "Leonid Romanov, son of the Tsar himself."
Isabella drifted toward the hall like a sleepwalker. Just then, Alfred turned. His eyes locked on her bare shoulders with a hawk's intensity before he looked away and murmured something to Romanov, who immediately turned his pale green gaze upon her, tuned, unmistakably real.
"Found yourself a new prey, Your Majesty?" sneered the finance minister's daughter, one of Elena's allies. "They say Lord Romanov is trained in hypnosis—seduces women into—"
Isabella flung her wine in the girl's face. Ignoring the shriek, she strode to the gilded harp. When the harpist looked up, she saw him clearly—snow-white skin, raven-black hair, and those unforgettable eyes.
"Chapter Three of The Romance of the Rose," she whispered. "Can you play it?"
His fingers froze on the strings. Her heart pounded. Only she and her senior had ever known that piece.