Suddenly it struck me that Nicholas might have anticipated some kind of trouble at this wedding and Darcy had been invited to protect him.

“But understand that he is here at my invitation and I have absolute confidence that he has nothing to do with the death of Field Marshal Pirin. The whole suggestion is ludicrous. You should be looking for—”

He broke off as Matty came in, looking puzzled and concerned. When she saw me, a relieved smile crossed her face.

“There you are, Georgie,” she said. “I wondered where you had disappeared to. We were all looking for you.”

I smiled back. “Oh, I think you know very well where I went to, since you sent me there.”

“What do you mean? One minute you were following me up the stairs, but when I reached the top, I turned around and you weren’t there.”

“Maybe that was because I was in the process of falling down the oubliette,” I said.

She gave a tight, nervous laugh. “Oubliette? There’s no such thing. Believe me, we hunted for it when we were children, didn’t we, Siegfried?”

“Then allow me to show you,” I said. “My maid is still trapped in the dungeon below and it’s about time someone rescued her.”

I marched them back through the halls until I recognized the place where the door had to be.

“Would you please show us the door in the paneling, Your Highness?” I asked Matty.

She shrugged, stepped forward and pushed open a section of the wall.

“You’ll see a staircase leads up from here,” I said, “and one of these flagstones tips an unsuspecting victim down into a dungeon. I’m not sure which.”

“But I go up and down this way all the time,” Matty said. “It is a shortcut from my room to the main floor.”

“Then, Your Highness, would you like to try them out for us?” I asked.

“Of course.” She walked confidently to the staircase and ascended the first couple of steps.

“You see?” She turned and smiled. “There is nothing here but an ordinary passageway.”

“There must be a knob or a lever or something that triggers the mechanism,” I said. “Look on the walls. Princess Maria was ahead of me, and—”

Matty looked up sharply. “One minute. You don’t think that I sent you into this dungeon? That I brought you here to trick you?”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly what I think,” I said. “I’m sorry, Matty, but you didn’t really want to introduce me to Vlad, did you? You wanted him to stay hidden.”

“What?” Matty’s father roared. “Vladimir? That boy is here, in the castle? When I forbade you to see him again?”

“No, Father. Of course not,” Matty said. “Here’s not here. I don’t know what Georgiana is talking about.”