The gnarled hand covered hers again. ‘Tabitha,’ she said earnestly. ‘You have been a godsend to me. You have looked after me since I first arrived in Vienna and often in your own personal time. You’ve cared for me this week when my own selfish children could hardly be bothered to call to see if I was okay. You work your fingers to the bone for little money and you never complain. You’re a ray of sunshine in a dark world and I wanted to show my love and appreciation for all that you do.’
Tabitha swallowed. A ray of sunshine? Her?
The only people who had ever said such nice things to her had been her father and paternal grandmother. Her lovely grandmother had died when she’d been seven but her memories of her were strong. Mrs Coulter had the same mischievous twinkle her grandmother had had and the same easy affection. Tabitha supposed that was what had drawn her to the elderly lady to begin with and partly why she felt such deep affection for her.
‘The ticket is in my name. Tonight, you will be Amelia Coulter, and you will dance with handsome men and drink champagne and spend an evening being who you were born to be.’
Tabitha blinked, partly to push back the tears threatening to spill down her face and partly in shock.
Being who you were born to be...?
She had spent the past four years trying her hardest to forget her birth right. The memories were too painful. All she could do was tackle each day as it came and look to the future.
Her heart thumped. Did Mrs Coulter know...?
The twinkling eyes were steady on hers. If Mrs Coulter knew Tabitha’s true identity, she was keeping her cards close to her chest.
But Tabitha had never hidden her true self. Her name was the only thing her stepmother had been unable to take from her. She’d taken everything else, though. Her home, her education, her money, her future...
‘Take a look in my wardrobe. Go on, dear.’
On legs that felt strangely drugged, Tabitha stepped through to the bedroom.
‘Right-hand door,’ Mrs Coulter called.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘You’ll see.’
And she did see.
When she opened the right-hand door of the wardrobe, all that hung on the rail was a floor-length ball gown that could have leapt off the pages of a fairy tale.
She stretched out a hand and ran her fingers over the delicate material, her eyes soaking up the pastel-pale pinks and greens overlaid with embellished gold-threaded patterns and encrusted with jewels and the palest of pink roses. An eighteenth-century princess would have been thrilled to wear something so beautiful.
On the shelf above it lay a pair of white-gold high-heeled shoes, a white eye-mask with gold detailing and gold braiding around its edges and a plume of wispy pale pink feathers shaped into a flower on the left cheek.
Hands now shaking, she took hold of a shoe and examined it in awe.
It was her size.
Dazed, she went back to the living area of the suite. ‘How...?’
Mrs Coulter smiled. ‘A lady has her ways.’
‘I can’t. I wish...’ She took a deep breath and hugged the shoe to her chest. ‘I wish I could go but I can’t. If I get caught, I’ll be fired. We’ve all been warned.’ And warned unambiguously. Any member of staff caught trying to enter the ball would have their contract of employment terminated.
But Mrs Coulter was not to be deterred. ‘We will make you unrecognisable. No one will know it’s you—no one will be expecting you to be there. In my experience, people see what they want and expect to see. They will not see a chambermaid. Come back here at five. I’ve arranged for a beautician to join us. She will turn you into a princess. And then tomorrow you can join me for lunch and tell me all about it.’ She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘I admit, I’m not being entirely altruistic. I’m too old and my knees too shot to go to the ball myself but I can live it vicariously through you.’
Hot tears prickled the back of Tabitha’s eyes. No one had ever done such a thing for her before.
‘Do not be afraid, my dear. Tonight you will be a princess and you will go to the ball, and I will not hear another word of argument about it.’
* * *
Giannis Basinas left the apartment he used as a base when in Vienna and strolled up the rose-hedged path that led to his hotel. He could have earmarked one of the suites for his own use but he preferred to give himself at least an illusion of privacy. Privacy was a concept frequently ignored by his large, exuberant family.
It was partly down to his family that he was making this walk now dressed in an all-black, leather swallowtail suit and hosting this masquerade ball. His sisters had been dropping hints since he’d turned thirty-five that he needed to find a new wife. He’d come to the reluctant conclusion that they were right.