The Wild Princess

One



Windsor Castle, St. George’s Chapel, 21 March 1871

Under siege, that’s what we are, Louise thought as she observed the mayhem beyond the church’s massive oak doors. Indeed the week-long crush of boisterous visitors had become truly dangerous.

“There must be thousands of them,” she murmured, more to herself than to any of her bridesmaids clustered around her.

Her brother Bertie gently closed the door, shutting out the cheers of the crowd. “It’s all right. The guardsmen have things well in hand.”

Scores of well-wishers from London and the surrounding countryside had arrived on foot and horseback, along with souvenir vendors, draymen with cartloads of sightseers, and hawkers of ale, roasted potatoes, and meat pies. They clogged Berkshire’s country roads, converging on Windsor, making virtual prisoners of the royal family and their guests within the great castle’s walls.

Many travelers hadn’t been content with a tourist’s hasty view of Windsor in the days before the wedding. They’d set up crude campsites outside the walls, lit bonfires that blazed through the night. Toasts to the bride and groom turned into drunken revelry. Hundreds pressed against groaning castle gates, hoping for a chance glimpse of the royal couple. Crowd control, never before an issue at a royal wedding, became a necessity. A nervous Queen Victoria called up her Hussars and a fleet of local constables to reinforce the castle’s guardsmen.

Louise stepped away from the chapel’s doors, fingering the delicate Honiton lace of her gown. Strangely, she wasn’t worried about being hurt by the mob of well-wishers. What concerned her was what her mother’s subjects might expect of her.

To do her duty as a princess, she supposed, whatever that might mean to them. Or simply to “be a good girl and don’t make trouble,” as her mother had so often scolded her since her earliest years.

Standing at the very foot of the church’s long nave, Louise tried to reassure herself that all the pomp and fuss over her marriage was of no consequence. It would pass with the end of this day. The mob would disperse. The groundsmen clear away the mountains of trash. The important thing was—she had agreed to wed the Marquess of Lorne as her mother wished. She was doing the responsible thing for her family. Surely, all would be well.

Louise rested her fingertips lightly on Bertie’s arm. The Prince of Wales stood ready to escort her down the aisle. She desperately wished her father were still alive to give her away. On the other hand, Papa might have talked her mother into letting her wait a little longer to marry. But, of the six girls in their family, it was her turn. In the queen’s mind, Louise at twenty-three was already teetering on the slippery verge of spinsterhood. An unwed, childless daughter knocking about the palace was a waste of good breeding stock.

Louise felt Bertie step forward, cued by the exultant chords of organ music swelling to the intricate harp obbligato strains of the “Wedding March.” She matched his stride, moving slowly down the long rose petal–strewn quire toward her bridegroom.

Another trembling step closer to the altar, then another. Wedding night jitters? Was that the source of her edginess?

Definitely not. The panic swelling in her breast could have little to do with a bride’s fragile insecurity regarding her wifely duties in bed. Louise felt anything but fragile and more than a little eager for her husband’s touch. Nevertheless, she sensed that something about the day was disturbingly wrong. Sooner or later, she feared it would snap its head around and bite her.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds and drew three deep breaths while letting her feet keep their own pace with the music.

“Are you all right?” Her brother’s voice.

She forced a smile for his benefit. “Yes, Bertie.”

“He’s a good man.” The prince had trimmed his dark mustache and looked elegantly regal, dressed in the uniform of their mother’s Hussars. He had initially stood against the marriage, believing his sister should hold out for a royal match. But now he seemed resigned and loath to spoil her day.

“I know. Of course he’s good.”

“You like him, don’t you?” Not love him. They both knew love didn’t enter into the equation for princesses. The daughters of British royals were bred to marry the heads of state, forge international alliances, produce the next generation to sit upon the thrones of Europe.

“I do like him.”

“Then you’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I will.” Somehow.

Three of her five bridesmaids—all in white, bedecked with garlands of hothouse lilies, rosebuds, and camellias—led the way down the long aisle, leaving the two youngest girls in Louise’s wake to control the heavy satin train behind her. The diamond coronet Lorne had given her as a wedding present held in place the lace veil she herself had designed.

She felt the swish of stiff petticoats against her limbs. The coolness of the air, captured within the church’s magnificent soaring Gothic arches, chilled her bare shoulders. Yards upon yards of precious handworked lace seemed to weigh her down, as though holding her back from the altar. An icy clutch of jewels at her throat felt suddenly too tight, making it hard to breathe.

Her nose tingled at the sweet waxy scent of thousands of burning candles mixed with perfume as her guests rose to view the procession. The pulse of the organ’s bass notes vibrated in her clenched stomach. Ladies of the Court, splendid in silks and brocades and jewels, the gentlemen in dignified black or charcoal gray frock coats, turned heads her way in anticipation—a dizzy blur of smiling, staring faces as she passed them by.

But a few stood out in sharp relief against the dazzling splendor: her dear friend, Amanda Locock beside her handsome doctor-husband, their little boy wriggling in Amanda’s arms. The always dour Prime Minister Gladstone. A grim-faced Napoleon III, badly reduced in health after his recent defeat by the Prussians. Her brothers and sisters: Affie, then Alice and Vicky with their noble spouses. A predictably bored-looking Arthur, always solemn Lenchen, and young, fidgety Leo. Bertie’s lovely Danish wife, Alix, clasped a hand over each of their two little boys to keep them quiet.

Louise lifted her gaze to the raised box to her left where she knew her mother would be seated. Beatrice, youngest of Louise’s eight siblings, sat close by the queen, gazing down wide-eyed at the ceremony. Victoria herself, a plump figure in black mourning muslin ten years after her husband’s death, her grim costume relieved only by the rubies and blues of the Order of the Garter star clipped over her left breast, looked down on the wedding party as though a goddess from Mount Olympus.

They’d all come to witness Louise’s union with the striking young man waiting for her at the chapel’s altar. The Marquess of Lorne. John Douglas Sutherland Campbell. A stranger to her in many ways, yet soon to be her wedded mate. Beside him stood his kinsmen in striking Campbell-green kilts, sword scabbards strapped to hips, hats cocked forward.

Louise felt an almost equal urge to rush into her intended’s arms . . . and to turn around and run back out through the chapel doors. Into the fresh spring air, breaking through the crowd to escape down Windsor’s famous Long Walk and into the countryside. To freedom.

But was that even a possibility now?

All of the country had lapped up news of her betrothal as eagerly as a cat does cream. Hadn’t the newspapers been chock full of personal details for months? The chaperoned carriage rides through Hyde Park. The elaborate French menu for the wedding feast. Everything—from the details of her gown to advertisements placed by a London perfume manufacturer announcing their newest fragrance, Love-Lorne—had been gossiped about in and outside of the court.

And then all of that fled her mind as Bertie deposited her before the archbishop and beside Lorne. Her husband-to-be stood breathtakingly handsome in his dark blue dress uniform of the Royal Argyllshire Artillery with its bits of gold braid, burnished buttons, and shining black leather boots that shaped his long legs to above the knees. A silver-hilted sword hung from the wide black patent belt that encircled his narrow waist. His hair, a glorious pale blond mane brushed back from his face, long enough to feather over his collar, looked slightly risqué and tempted her fingertips.

He took her hand in his. At his touch, she finally settled inside herself.

During the ceremony Louise was aware of her bridegroom’s eyes turning frequently to her. She did her best to meet his gaze, to bring a little smile to her lips and hope that some of it slipped into her eyes for him. Like her, he had blue eyes. But while hers were a soft shade, the mesmerizing sapphire brilliance of the young marquess’s eyes never failed to startle people on meeting him for the first time. He was a Scot, one of her mother’s northern subjects. When his father passed, he would become the Duke of Argyll. A minor title, but better than none at all in her mother’s view. For Louise’s part, titles were of no consequence. They marked a man as neither good nor bad, kind nor cruel, rich nor poor.

She had every reason to believe they’d get along well, even though they’d not once been left alone together. Still, their escorts had been discreet, allowing them to speak freely. Lorne had even shyly kissed her on the cheek, last night. In time, they might fall in love. She’d like that. And even if they didn’t, he would give her the children she so longed for. Life was full of compromises.

The archbishop was speaking in that singsong voice of his that was at once soft yet somehow carried to the very back of the grandest church. Louise let the words wash over her, a warm and calming stream. She daydreamed of her honeymoon—Lorne making tender love to her, his soft hands opening her gown to touch the places on her body that most longed for his caresses. And she would discover ways to please him.

The images in her mind brought a rush of heat to her cheeks. She raised her eyelashes shyly to glance up at him in anticipation.

Their gazes met.

He grinned and winked. Did he know what she was thinking?

It was at that moment something odd caught her eye. A motion off to her left and above. Startled, she turned her head just far enough to take in her mother’s box.

John Brown, once a lowly gillie in the queen’s stables at Balmoral in Scotland, and now her personal attendant and self-appointed bodyguard, stood behind Victoria, physically blocking a man who seemed to be trying to force his way into the queen’s box. A frisson of alarm shot through Louise.

“Steady,” Lorne whispered in her ear, grasping her hand. “Brown’s handling it.”

The archbishop, too, seemed to have noticed the disturbance, but he droned on, the ultimate performer under pressure.

Louise glimpsed Victoria waving off Brown. The stranger bent down, as though to whisper something in the queen’s ear. He wore rough riding clothes, a long, dung brown overcoat of a less than fashionable cut, in what appeared to be scuffed leather. He looked unshaven. As if he hadn’t bothered to even run a comb through his spiky black hair. In one hand he held not a stovepipe top hat, which was the only acceptable headwear for a gentleman in London, but a strange wide-brimmed style of black felt hat she’d never seen on any head in all of England.

Louise turned back to face the bishop, fearful of missing the rest of her own wedding. The next time she glanced back, the stranger had gone.

Lorne squeezed her hand, as if to say, All is well.

Was it? She shivered but forced a smile in return.

Then all at once, the archbishop was giving them his blessing. A joyous “Hurrah!” rang out in the chapel. Her new husband kissed her sweetly on the lips, and every concern fled her mind at this excruciatingly joyful moment.

All she could think of was the night that lay before them—her first night as a married woman.