The Wild Princess

Fifty-one



Louise felt the carriage jolt. She opened her eyes and looked out at the cheering crowd lining the street as the carriages left Buckingham’s gates. She loved London, loved its people. It broke her heart to think of leaving this city. But what she most missed, already, was her Raven.

She had said nothing about this to anyone, of course, but somehow her husband must have read her thoughts.

“I’m truly sorry you’re unhappy, my dear.” Lorne kept his voice well below the camouflaging roar of the cheering crowd. “But it’s all for the best, you know.”

“What’s for the best?” she said dully, staring at the lump under her glove made by her engagement and wedding rings. A glint of diamonds peeked through the lace. Gold, diamonds—what could they mean to a woman when they failed to signify love?

“The American’s dismissal. He wasn’t your type. I was wondering how long it would take you to realize that. You do understand that now, don’t you?”

She glowered at him then shot a look at her sisters on the facing seat. Both were so engrossed in waving to the ecstatic crowd they showed no interest in anything she or Lorne might say. Even Alice’s duke seemed overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the celebratory mob.

“My type, sir,” Louise hissed, “is not for you to decide.” It came out rather more vehemently than she’d intended. But her patience with the marquess was fast running out. She hadn’t slept a wink since she’d last seen Byrne the day before. It seemed so unfair that, at last, when she’d found a man who not only excited her but truly moved her, she couldn’t have him. He was everything a lover should be—strong, ruggedly handsome, a born protector, and sensitive to her physical as well as emotional needs. How could she not fall in love with such a man?

“I’m sorry,” Lorne whispered. “Truly I am. But there’s nothing to be done about it. He’s dismissed and ordered out of the country. I’ll do what I can to help you . . . you know, find someone appropriate, once we’re established in Ottawa.”

She’d told Lorne about her assignation with Stephen. To keep secrets would do neither of them any good. But why couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t just any lover she wanted. It was Stephen. Or no one. Ever.

Her head pounded with fatigue, her body ached with restlessness. But she reminded herself of the one thing she could cling to—Stephen’s promise. They might need to wait for a while, but he’d come to her. They would find times to be together. She would live for those golden moments.

Lorne patted her hand, as if to say, Poor, poor girl. How naïve you are.

But she wasn’t. Not anymore.

She knew all about love—that beautiful, exquisitely painful but precious journey. Donovan had come and gone. She no longer mourned his loss, no longer cared where he might be or why he’d left her. It was enough to know he was safe and living his life as he chose somewhere in the world. And as to Lorne and her hopes for their marriage? In truth, she didn’t now and never had felt married to the marquess. It was all for show. A relationship that would never be consummated, despite their vows. This was not love.

She pulled herself erect, determined not to stew through the entire day. Stephen Byrne had pledged himself to her. She trusted his word. She’d focus on future stolen moments they’d share. They would create a marriage of the spirit—although they could never appear in public as a couple. To the world she would be the Marchioness of Lorne, and after Lorne’s father passed on, the Duchess of Argyll. But in her heart, she was the Raven’s bride.

She tested her smile for her mother’s subjects. They lined the street, four and five deep, waving flags and bowers of flowers, shouting, “Long live the queen!” It occurred to her that many of them still thought Victoria was in the coronation coach with her. She covered her mouth with one gloved hand to hide a wicked smile. If her mother realized she was being overlooked, she would be furious.

“We’re going too fast,” Beatrice complained. “We always parade at walking pace. The people want to see us.”

“It’s all right, Bea,” Louise comforted her. “We must be behind schedule. The guardsmen need to get us to the church in time for the ceremony. I’m sure we’ll travel at a more leisurely speed on our way home.”

Beatrice pouted, playing with the lace ruffles of her gown. It was an exquisite dress, in three colors, which had recently become all the rage in Paris. An underskirt of blue faille with gathered flounces, an apricot overdress trimmed with pale green silk ruches, and a discreet bodice designed to hide any suggestion of a bust—which no doubt pleased the queen, who still was intent on keeping Baby an innocent.

“By then everyone will have gone back to their homes, I’m sure,” Beatrice fretted.

“You’ll have plenty of chances to show off your pretty new dress when we arrive at the church, my sweet. Journalists from all of the newspapers will be waiting outside Westminster Abbey, writing down everything about your gown and how lovely and grown-up you look.”

Alice rolled her eyes but said nothing to Louise’s obvious flattery of their youngest sister. Beatrice seemed mollified and took to leaning out the side window to better extend her arm and wave. By the time they’d passed half a mile down Vauxhall Bridge Road toward the river, Bea had collected a lapful of posies, nosegays, and woven crowns of wildflowers thrust into her hands by well-wishers.

Flowers, Louise thought.

They reminded her of that day when Byrne had first kissed her in her shop, where she always kept a bouquet. Or rather, she had kissed him, little knowing where that would lead. She knew he must have taken himself out of London by now. She wondered where he was. Already on a dock waiting for a ship to America? Or maybe it would take him a while to arrange for transport.

Strangely, she felt his presence even now. As if in his absence he still watched over her, letting her know that he loved her, that he cared for her safety.

It was silly, of course. She knew that. He wasn’t here. She hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of him. He would have been easy to spot in the courtyard while they were boarding the carriages and waiting for her mother to appear. She sighed but did her best to turn a cheerful face toward the window and greet the people of London. The people she’d come to feel so much closer to than any of her brothers or sisters possibly could.

She felt a moment of pride. She alone had ventured beyond royal walls, sat with commoners in parks and pubs, invited them into her shop, worked alongside them, painted them into her art. She loved these people, from the grimiest street urchin to the eldest gin-guzzling granny, from the corner flower sellers to Fleet Street’s paperboys and the penny-desperate little crossing sweepers. From the costermongers wheeling their barrows of produce up and down cobbled lanes to the bootblacks and market stall hawkers, draymen, performing mountebanks, and even the disgusting but necessary rat catchers. They were her people. Being among them, and helping as she could, had brought her immense satisfaction and friends far richer than she might have cultivated within the closed circle of her mother’s court.

She had earned for herself a truly rich life, and she was more hopeful than ever for the future of women, and not just those in London. She would do what good she could in Canada and, God willing, elsewhere in the world to bring women into their own.

Louise tossed a kiss to a little girl in the crowd as the carriage climbed toward the middle of Vauxhall Bridge. It was then that the explosion shattered her world.

Beatrice cried out at the deafening noise.

“Oh Lord, what’s happening?” Alice shrieked, reaching for her husband’s arm. The duke frowned out the window.

Their coach lurched drunkenly. Louise gripped the inside armrest on the door. She looked out her window, now slanted toward the pavers, and peered forward along the parade route, trying to locate the source of the explosion. Her mother’s little brougham and the Prince of Wales’s larger carriage had both stopped on the bridge ahead of them.

It took her several seconds longer to comprehend the impossible—that the bridge simply ended twenty feet beyond the coronation coach. A gaping maw of missing stonework separated the two lead carriages from the one in which Louise and her sisters rode. The entire center span of the bridge had been blown away in front of them.

Everything that happened after that moment seemed to occur in slow motion, enabling Louise to fix each detail of the disaster indelibly in her mind. As she watched, transfixed by the horrific scene, the space between the two halves of bridge widened, more and more stones tumbling down and splashing into the river below. Then the entire slope of the roadway beneath their coach shifted, making her gasp at their precariousness. The road slanted downward, then settled momentarily, as if trying to decide whether it too would give up and drop away beneath the royal cavalcade.

All was mayhem in the coach—Bea and Alice sobbing, the duke trying to calm them, Lorne looking confused.

“We’re safer here than out there on the road,” the duke said when he saw Louise try to leverage herself out of her tilted seat and reach for the door.

She thought he might be right. Onlookers who had lined the bridge to watch the parade pass were running toward the shore, knocking one another down in their panic.

But then she felt the immense carriage, weighed down by its ornamental carvings and gilded embellishments, continue to grind forward despite the driver’s and footmen’s attempts to brake. It pushed the terrified, screeching horses ahead of it, ever closer to the brink.

A man wearing a white shirt rode up to their coach on horseback, shouting, “Jump. Jump now!”

Startled, Louise looked up at his face. Stephen!

He was here, with her, watching over them.

It took her less than a heartbeat to understand what Stephen meant, and why. As he slashed the traces with a knife, freeing the team of horses from the coach, letting them run back as they’d come, it became clear to her. He was afraid if the horses went over the edge and into the water, they would drag the coach over with them. Everyone still inside would drown. If they survived the plunge.

“Get out. We have to get out now!” she shouted.

Alice looked horrified. “How? The coach is tipping over. What if it falls on us?”

Lorne flashed Louise a look that told her he understood. He tried to open the lower of the two doors, but it was jammed.

The duke said, “It has to be up and out the other way. Ladies, follow me.” Standing on one of the seats he shoved against the door, now almost directly overhead. He’d barely broken the door open when something in the coach’s structure gave way with a loud snap.

“Go!” Lorne shouted.

The duke clambered through the door then reached down for his wife and pulled Alice, squealing in fright, petticoats and skirts billowing like a pink cloud, up and out. Louise felt the carriage still skidding forward, wood and metal screeching against stone. How far to the broken end of the bridge’s roadway? Did even ten feet remain?

Lorne grabbed Louise’s hand.

She fought his grip. “No! Beatrice. Take her next.” She shoved her little sister into his arms. Realizing from his hesitation he was about to argue with her, she screamed, “Go, Lorne! For god’s sake, go.” She shoved them both up and out the door even as the front wheel of the coach grated over the last crumbling stones.

The last one out, Louise poked her head up and through the door just in time to see Lorne and Bea tumble to safety. The fat body of the coach teetered, creaking on the stone lip. Beside the carriage, the white-shirted rider hastily dismounted. “Stephen!” she cried.

He ran to the edge of the broken bridge, reached for her, but she was too far away. She climbed halfway out on the broken carriage frame. He appeared ready to fling himself aboard even as she scrambled for a grip to pull herself the rest of the way out. But two guardsmen seized him by the arms and held him back.

And then she felt the coach beneath her go suddenly weightless as the blast-weakened stones supporting it finally gave way. Louise and coach plummeted down, down, down into the river.