The bones in his left leg, broken a few years past after a leap out of the German countess’s bedchamber window, protested but didn’t buckle, and for that he was profoundly grateful. He straightened up, made an attempt to brush off the worst of the tree from his clothing, and turned to limp toward the road in hopes of seeing Galahad grazing on the verge.

Three men clad in Danish uniforms, all armed with rifles and sabers, faced him. One of the soldiers held his own sword, which he’d removed to climb the tree.

His shoulders slumped as the men moved forward. “Cursed,” he said. “Definitely cursed.”

One

A princess strives for modality of both voice and being. Discordant events, such as the refusal by a groom to allow one to ride one’s father’s stallion, are to be greeted with a slightly elevated eyebrow (no more than one quarter of an inch; anything else is considered mannish), and a slightly aggrieved expression. Under no circumstances should carbolic powder be placed in the groom’s underthings so as to ensure unsightly and ceaseless itching of an Unspeakable Body Part.

—Princess Christian of Sonderburg-Beck’s Guide For Her Daughter’s Illumination and Betterment

“Princess!”

Dagmar tapped the end of the quill against her lips and considered best how to answer this latest demand from her cousin.

“Princess Dagmar!”

My very dear cousin Frederick, she wrote, then decided that given the tone in her cousin’s letter, the rotter didn’t deserve such niceties.

Frederick:

I have received your missive dated today and have to say that I’m shocked that a man who Dearest Papa always insisted had so much potential would use words like “blot on the existence of my life” and “irreverent, mouthy, and in essence, painful to be near” to a lady like me, let alone one of royal blood, but as the good book—and I refer here to my sainted mother’s detailed journal—always says, breeding will tell.

“Princ—oh, there you are.” A slight form appeared in the open doorway, bobbing a little curtsy before entering the room. “I’ve been hunting all over for you. There’s a drunkard in the garden.”

I shouldn’t have thought it necessary to point out that the other good book—the Bible—mentions it as a sin to turn one’s back on one’s destitute and orphaned cousins—Dagmar paused, glancing over to where her companion stood patiently waiting to be acknowledged. “Oh, hello, Julia. Do you know what the Bible says about cousins?”

The slight, blonde woman of forty-some years looked puzzled. “No. What does it say?”

“That’s what I was asking you.” Dagmar tapped the quill on her lips again. “Is it a sin to claim that the Bible says something if it really doesn’t?”

“I think it is, yes.” Julia sat, clasping her hands in a pious gesture that just made Dagmar sigh. It wasn’t that she was especially intolerant, or even irreligious, but the truth was that she was forever being taxed with being sinful by her cousin Frederick, who had long claimed that Dearest Papa had let her run wild and had not in the least tiny bit drummed into her how a proper lady should behave.