The Wild Princess

Forty-two



Louise felt as though the air in the room suddenly had turned to porridge. It was far too thick to breathe. Her head spun. She stood up from her chair and reached blindly for Byrne’s arm. Somewhere in the distance she heard Stephen thanking Christian Stockmar for his time. She barely felt him guide her outside and into the carriage.

“To the palace,” Byrne called up to the driver then turned to her, looking worried. “Are you all right?”

She waved off his concern and concentrated on taking as deep breaths as her horrid corset stays allowed.

“Rhodes,” Byrne said. “He’s one of your mother’s staff?”

“No.” She shook her head violently. “Philip Rhodes is the prime minister’s secretary. He has access to all of our residences, either while accompanying Mr. Gladstone or when transporting documents to and from my mother.”

“The day of the rats, was he—”

“Yes, both Gladstone and Disraeli were there that afternoon. Gladstone had his secretary with him to take notes of their meeting with my mother.” Her mention of the former prime minister’s name set off another suspicion. “Oh lord, the murder of the two clerks—one resembled Disraeli.”

“But Rhodes would have nothing against the former PM,” Byrne said.

“True, but his employer does. They are bitter political opponents. Do you suppose Mr. Gladstone himself might have ordered Rhodes to kill Disraeli? That he also might have wished to terrify my mother and all of us by delivering the rats?”

Byrne was shaking his head before she finished talking. “Gladstone seems to me a cold, calculating, and ruthless man, politically. But I can’t see him sending anyone to knock off his Tory foes. Aside from that, there’s no love lost between Gladstone and the Irish rebels. He’d never do anything to aid the radicals’ cause. And remember, they claimed responsibility for the murders.”

She reached for his hand as the carriage rattled away down the street. “Then Rhodes is acting independently?”

“It would seem.” He gripped her fingers so tightly she knew he was unaware that he was hurting her. She loosened his strong fingers before they crushed hers.

He leaned back in the carriage, propped one foot on his other knee, closing his eyes in thought. Absently, he stroked the back of her hand. “Let us assume Philip Rhodes had an innate hatred for your mother, passed to him from his father. The baron likely complained to the boy about the queen and their battle for control over the royal household. When Albert passed away and Victoria dismissed the baron, Rhodes would have been . . . how old?” He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Perhaps eighteen, nineteen,” she supplied.

“He would have felt the shame of his father’s being tossed out of England. Most likely any financial support he had been receiving from the baron was reduced or cut off entirely.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

Byrne continued with his theory. “So we can assume the young man felt the sting of his father’s banishment to Germany in more ways than one. For his father’s sake, and for his mother’s as well as for himself, as they were now suddenly very poor.”

Louise felt an urgency to be back with her family. To warn them. Protect them in whatever way she could. As familiar streets swept past she counted the minutes.

They were nearly to Buckingham when Byrne’s eyes flashed open and he snapped out of his silent contemplation to speak again. “The real question is, how deeply is Rhodes connected with the Fenians?”

She gasped. “You really think it’s not just a personal grudge? You believe he is in league with them?”

“It makes sense he would align himself with others who have a reason to hate the queen and wish to do her harm. And he is Irish on his mother’s side. The Secret Service suspects the Fenians have infiltrated the government and placed some of their officers in high positions. It would be to their advantage to have direct access to the prime minister.”

Louise shuddered. How she wished she could remember everything that had happened on The Day of the Rats. Where had Rhodes been? With Gladstone the entire time? Might he have left the PM long enough to wend his way through the palace to the old nursery wing and drop off his filthy cargo? And how would he have carried live beasts, undetected?

A vision of the man swam before her eyes. Germanic features, but with unlikely dark hair (black Irish, they called that coloring), and not tall like his father. He often carried a briefcase the size of a small trunk—easily large enough to accommodate a ream of paper.

Or perhaps three drugged rats?