Velvet Undercover by Teri Brown Page B

meal and forget my mission for a few more minutes. Sighing, I wipe my fingers on the cloth napkin and untie the bindings on the packet. Unrolling it, I find a sheaf of papers, and lay them out according to their type—official travel and identification papers in one pile, pictures in another, statistics in another. Then I pick up the travel papers.
    Sophia Thérèse von Schönburg, born 1895 in Bonn, Germany.
    I look up. “I’m supposed to be twenty years old?”
    Miss Tickford waves a hand. “Simple.”
    â€œReally?” With my blue eyes, pale skin, and curly blond hair, I look more like a Dresden doll than a twenty-year-old woman.
    â€œTrust me, Samantha, we can make you twenty. Now go on.”
    I glance at the dossier and read aloud.
    â€œHer parents were both killed in a carriage accident whenshe was four and she was taken in by her father’s eldest sister, the baroness Eugenie, whose husband, the baron von Schönburg, died early in their marriage. The aunt lived in a small town outside Cologne. She later married Captain Franklin Prosser of the British army.”
    I look up. “Who are the von Schönburgs? If the German aristocracy is anything like the English aristocracy, I’ll need to know the lineage.”
    Miss Tickford nods. “I have more information on the family line that I’ll give you later. All you need to know at this moment is that they’re the distant relatives of the duchess Cecilie and therefore considered wellborn even if they don’t run in the same circles. That connection is what is important here.”
    I stare at Miss Tickford, uneasiness crawling up my arms like ants. Duchess Cecilie is the wife of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the kaiser’s firstborn son and the heir to the German throne. I glance over the paper, assimilating facts.
    Sophia Thérèse was privately educated by an English governess provided by her new uncle, and she attended a small Lutheran church near the family estate.
    I turn to the photographs. The first one is of a stern-looking couple. “Her parents?”
    Miss Tickford nods.
    The next photo is a woman with fair hair and broad cheekbones. “The aunt?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
    After another nod from Miss Tickford, I study a smallhand-colored portrait of a child who looks to be about nine years old. Like the others, she’s fair, though the colorist has pinkened her cheeks unnaturally. I suppose there’s enough of a resemblance to me if no one has seen her since childhood.
    The next photograph is of a group of young people at a picnic. There are several girls in the picture and I have Miss Tickford point Sophia Thérèse out to me. Her cheekbones, like her aunt’s, are wide, and she’s grown stouter.
    â€œWhere is she now?”
    â€œCaptain Prosser snuck the family into Switzerland. They currently live in Davos.”
    I frown. “But how am I to—”
    Miss Tickford interrupts me. “Sophia Thérèse died of influenza soon after she arrived in Davos. Mail service has been so disrupted since the war began that no one in Germany knows of her passing. You will assume her identity.”
    I sit back, the food I just consumed turning in my stomach. I’m to become a dead girl. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner, but it makes perfect sense. The dead tell no tales, after all.
    â€œHow did we get this information so quickly when we just learned of the assignment?”
    â€œA ghoul put the packet together while we were still in Verdun.”
    â€œA ghoul?” I ask the question even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
    She nods. “An operative who scans the obituaries anddeath notices for someone whose identity we can steal.”
    I knew I shouldn’t have asked.
    Miss Tickford rises and goes back into the room where I slept last night—the maid’s room off the kitchen. When she