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Wittelsbach name is in jeopardy, our pedigree sullied, and it is only a matter of time before you and Nené both will be as easy to marry off as one-eyed crows.”
    What I did not share with Mummi was that it all seemed so romantic to me. How a man could fall so deeply in love that nothing else mattered. Not the silly laws, nor the arguing over where a country border should go, or even who should wear what hat when. Who cared about what time a beer garden should shut down for the night when real tears and passions and hearts were involved? And Lola herself was a mystery. Nobody seemed to really know exactly whence she hailed. Some said Ireland, some India. But she claimed to be from Spain. Which was where she’d learned to dance, Uncle Ludwig had told us. “She dances as though her feet are not even on the ground,” he’d boasted when Papa had inquired.
    “Well, dear brother-in-law,” Papa had muttered, “that’s probably important, given that you can barely hold yourself up, much less a dance partner.”
    As I recalled this, I held baby Sophie as though we ourselves were waltzing, twirling round while the baby giggled and kicked her chubby legs against my pinafore.
    “Elisabeth, you must give up this dream world you favor,” Mummi lamented, tearing her hands away from her tear-stained face and grabbing Sophie back from me, “and learn to conduct yourself like a future queen.” Little Sophie was too young, thank goodness, to understand what her mother said next. “For if you insist on living in a bubble cloud, you’ll end up no better off than me. Stuck in a marriage with a dolt and tied to a nest of wild, selfish children who don’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”
    With that pronouncement, Mummi, her baby daughter firmly in her arms, strode angrily away, but not before reminding me that supper would be ready within the hour and she expected me to be cleaned up and sitting down before then. Or else.
    All of my ponies’ filth had resettled upon my very person. Their coats now gleaming, it would take sixteen buckets of well water, lye and a lambskin to scour me half as clean. It seemed that most hours of my life I was washing dirt from my body or brushing the tangles out of my hair and, with the archduchess sticking her nose into our business ( heed the stains on her teeth. Once she’s of age, yellow teeth will prove a liability) , it was bound to grow worse. With an impulse I could not forestall, I wound my arm up and hurled the curry brush toward the far end of the stable, aiming for wood, but woe and alas, the brush instead found its way to the head of a man who’d wandered in just at the wrong moment. The man, I was loath to discover, was my father’s good friend, the hunt master, Count S.
    “Ouch,” yelped the count as the wooden handle clunked against his forehead.
    “Heavens,” I countered, leaving Psyche and Cupid to rush toward my victim.
    Count S., devoid of crimson coat and riding cap, looked the part of a lowly stable hand. As he rubbed his blossoming bruise, his face twisted in pain and his shoulders hunched over, I could see that he was not much more than a boy, really. Barely older than my eldest brother. His hair was stuck up in a cowlick and his shoulders were not nearly as broad as they’d seemed in the hunt jacket.
    “Let me fetch some ice from the cold cellar,” I offered while trying to peek under his hand to assess the damage. “Or some balm from the medicine shelf.”
    He stuck a palm out toward me, as though commanding a line of carriages to halt. “No need,” he managed as he straightened up, regained his countenance. He wagged his finger my way. “You are the duke’s second daughter. Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, yes?”
    I nodded, then bowed, then curtsied, not exactly sure which form of salutation was required. “Yes. And you are Papa’s friend. You shot the vixen. You cut off the brush for me.”
    The man chuckled and postured his carriage into a tougher,