Uchiha Castle
"Your Highness."
The prince in question, whose given name was Sasuke Uchiha, looked up to find his majordomo, Naruto, holding a tray. "I've got this rare vase all in piece, Naruto. Speak quickly."
"Rare vase," Naruto said with distaste. "It sounds like a scandalous item one might buy in Suna. The wrong side of Suna," he added.
"Spare me your quibbles," Sasuke said. "This particular jug was meant for the dead, not the living. It used to hold six small bones for playing knucklebones, and was found in a child's grave."
Naruto bent nearer and peered at the pieces of clay scattered across the desk. "Where are the knucklebones?"
"The knuckleboned Taiya threw them out. In fact, he threw this little jug out too, since the child was poor, and he is only interested in ravaging the tombs of kings. I'm trying to see whether I can identify how the top, which I don't have, was attached. I think there were bronze nails attached to both these pieces." He pointed. "And the nails were mended at least once before the vase was put in the tomb, see?"
Naruto looked at the pieces. "Needs mending again. Why are you bothering?"
"This child's parents had nothing to give him to bring to the underworld but his knucklebones," Sasuke said, picking up his magnifying glass. "Why shouldn't that gift be honored equally with the trumpery gold Taiya is after?"
"A message has arrived from Princess Tenari's delegation," Naruto said, apparently accepting Sasuke's edict in regard to the knucklebones. "She is now the Land of the Wave and will arrive on schedule. We've had some two hundred acceptance for your betrothal ball, among them your nephew, Kiba Inuzuka. In fact, the viscount will arrive before the ball, by the sound of it."
"Bringing the Golden Fleece?" Sasuke's nephew, whom he vaguely remembered as a boy with a fat bottom, had betrothed himself to one of the richest heiresses in Konoha.
"His Lordship will be accompanied by his betrothed, Miss Hinata Haruno," Naruto said, glancing at his notes.
"It's hard to believe that Kiba could have garnered such a prize; perhaps she has freckles or is cross-eyed," Sasuke said, carefully aligning the clay fragments so that he could determine where the nails originated.
Naruto shook his head. "At her debut this spring, Miss Hinata was accounted one of the most beautiful women on the marriage market." They had been in Konoha for a matter of months, but he already had a firm grasp on relevant gossip among the aristocracy. "Her adoration for her betrothed was also universally noted," he added.
"She hasn't met me," Sasuke said idly. "Maybe I should steal her away before my own bride arrives. A Golden Fleece for a Russian one. My Japanese is far better than my Russian."
Naruto didn't say a word, just slowly looked from Sasuke's hair to his feet. Sasuke knew what Naruto was seeing: black hair pulled back from a widow's peak, eyebrows that came to points over his eyes in a way that frightened some women, the shadow of a beard that never seemed to really go away. Something in his expression scared off the soft ones, the ones that thought to cuddle and wrap his hair around their fingers after sex.
"Of course, you could try," Naruto commented. "But I expect you'll have your hands full trying to charm your own bride."
Not his best insult, but pretty good.
"You make it sound as if Tenari will run for the hills at the sight of me." Sasuke knew damn well that the glimmer of ferocity in his eyes frightened ladies who were more used to lapdogs. But for all that, he had yet to meet the woman whose eyes didn't show a slight widening, a sparkle of happiness, at the prospect of meeting a prince. They liked to have a prince under their belt.
Still, this was the first time he would be trying to charm a wife, rather than a lover. One had to assume that women took the business more seriously than they did the occasional bedding.
A curse sounded in his head but died before reaching his lips. He turned back to the little pot before him. "Perhaps fortunately, my betrothed has no more choice in the matter than I do."
Naruto bowed. He left as silently as he had arrived.
Haruno House
There was a moment of cool silence in the room, like the silence that follows a gunshot when hunters are in the woods.
Hinata didn't say anything. Sakura took one look at her soft, bewildered eyes and saw that her mother's pronouncement had flown over her head.
"Hinata is my sister," Sakura repeated.
"Yes, so you bloody well better go there and make sure her marriage goes through before she's ruined. Because she's your sister."
A little pulse of relief rushed through Sakura's veins. She must have misunderstood, she had—
"She's your half sister," Masako clarified, her voice grating.
"But—she's—" Sakura turned to Hinata. "How old are you?"
"You know how old I am," Hinata said, snuffling a bit as she rubbed her lower lip. "I'm almost exactly five years younger than you."
"You're eighteen," Sakura said. Her heart was thumping in her chest.
"Which makes you a ripe twenty-three," Masako said pleasantly. "Or perhaps twenty-four. At your age, it's easy to forget."
"Your husband, the colonel—"
Masako shrugged.
Sakura found herself struggling to breathe. She felt as if her whole life were unfolding in front of her, all the questions she never knew she had. The shock of her father coming home, just two weeks after her mother's funeral, and saying that he was planning to marry by special license.
Her mother lying in bed all those years, and her father popping his head in now and then to say cheerful things and toss kisses in her direction but never to sit by his wife's side.
Because apparently he'd been sneaking off to sit with Masako.
"I feel as if I'm missing something," Hinata said, looking from one to the other. "Are you going to cry, Sakura?"
Sakura recoiled. She had never cried, not since her father's funeral. "Of course not!" she snapped.
There was another beat of silence in the room.
"Why don't you do the honors?" Sakura said finally, looking at her stepmother. "I'm agog to learn the particulars."
"The particulars are none of your business," Masako stated. Then she turned to Hinata. "Listen, darling, you remember how we used to see dearest Hino even before we came to live in this house?"
Hino! Sakura had never thought for a moment that her father's name had any connection to that of her stepsister.
"Yes," Hinata agreed. "We did."
"That would be because your mother was his mistress," Sakura said. "I gather he visited your house for at least eleven years, before my mother died. Was there a colonel at all? Is Hinata illegitimate?" she asked Masako.
"It hardly matters," Masako said coolly. "I can provide for her."
Sakura knew that. Her beloved, foolish father had left everything to his wife . . . and Masako had turned it into a sweet dowry for Hinata, and be damned whether the estate needed the income. It was all Hinata's now.
Who was not only pregnant, but illegitimate. One had to suppose that the colonel, Masako's supposed first husband, had never existed.
Masako got up and stubbed out her cigar in a dish overflowing with half-smoked butts. "I am shocked beyond belief that the two of you haven't sprung to your feet and hugged each other in an excess of girlish enthusiasm. But since you haven't, I'll make this short. You will go to Uchiha Castle, Sakura, because your sister is carrying a child and needs the approval of the prince. You will dress as your sister, you will take the bloody hounds with you, and you will make this work."
Masako looked tough, and more tired than she usually did. "In that case, you will keep the Yamagachee's in their cottage," Sakura stated.
Her stepmother shrugged. She didn't really give a damn either way, Sakura realized. She had launched the Yamagachee into the situation just in case the plea of blood relations failed.
"I've summoned the same man who cut Hinata's hair," Masako said briskly. "He'll be here tomorrow morning to cut off all of that rot on your head. Three seamstresses are coming as well. You'll need at least twenty gowns altered."
"You'll be at the castle for three or four days," Hinata said.
She got to her feet, and for the first time, Sakura recognized that her sister was indeed going to have a child. There was something slightly clumsy about the way she moved.
"I'm sorry," Hinata said, walking over to stand before Sakura.
"There's nothing for you to be sorry for!" Masako interjected.
"Yes, there is," she insisted. "I'm sorry that our father was the sort of man he was. I'm not sorry that he married my mother, but I'm—I'm just sorry about all of it. About what you must think of him now."
Sakura didn't want to think about her father. She had tried not to think of him in the last seven years, since his death. It was too painful to think about the way he laughed, and the way he would stand by the fireplace and tell her amusing stories about the Land of Waves, reflected firelight glinting from his wineglass.
And now there was a whole new reason to not think of him.
She returned Hinata's embrace politely, then disengaged herself and turned to Masako. "Why must I come to dinner tonight?"
"Lord Inuzuka has some doubt that you two look enough alike to fool someone who might have met your sister."
"But my hair—"
"It's not the hair," her stepmother said. "We'll put you in a decent gown and you'll see the resemblance soon enough. Hinata is known for her beauty, her dogs, and her glass slippers. As long as you don't indulge your churlish tongue, you'll pass."
"What on earth is a glass slipper?" Sakura asked.
"Oh, they're marvelous!" Hinata cried, clasping her hands together. "I brought them into fashion myself this season, Sakura, and then everyone started wearing them."
"Your feet are about the same size," Masako said. "They'll fit."
Sakura looked down at her tired, gray gown and then up at her stepmother. "What would you have done if my father had lived? If I had debuted when I was supposed to and people recognized the resemblance between myself and Hinata?"
"I didn't worry about it," Masako said with one of her shrugs.
"Why not? Wouldn't there have been the risk that someone would have seen the two of us together and guessed?"
"She's five years younger than you. I would have kept her in the schoolroom until you married."
"I might not have taken. I might not have found a husband. My father would have . . ."
A smile twisted the corner of Masako's lips. "Oh, you would have taken. Don't you ever look in the mirror?"
Sakura stared at her. Of course she looked in the mirror. She saw her perfectly regular features staring back at her. She didn't see Hinata's dewy eyes, or her dark curls, or her charming smile, because she didn't have any of those.
"You're a bloody fool," Masako said, reaching out for her cigar case and then dropping it again. "I'm smoking too many of these, which is entirely your fault. For Goodness sake, get yourself into a decent dress by eight this evening. You'd better go see Hinata's maid straight off; you're not fit to scrub the fireplace in that rag you're wearing."
"But I don't want Kibi to see my lip like this," Hinata said, sniffing.
"I'll instruct Yamato to put a single candelabrum on the table," her mother said. "Kiba won't be able to see a rat if it jumps on the plate in front of him."
So it all came back to the rats, which was fitting, because that's where the story began.