The Wild Princess

Five



Brash. Coarse. Unnervingly powerful.

What a horrid, ill-mannered man, Louise thought as she raced through Buckingham’s maze of corridors with her mother’s agent close behind her. But recalling that vile note set her thoughts spinning off in a different direction.

How often, she wondered, do we fail to recognize a critical moment in our lives while it’s actually happening?

This, she couldn’t help believing, was one of those special moments. And not just because of a few silly rats. She had the oddest sense that time itself was waiting for her to open her eyes and take notice of the importance of this particular day, this singular moment, because nothing—nothing—ever would be the same for her. Maybe not for any of them.

Her skin prickled with apprehension as she lengthened her stride, aware of Byrne close behind her—keeping up easily. He moved more like a predator, an animal, than a man. Silent, serious, instinctively tuned into his surroundings. Her nerves tingled with an uneasy awareness of his presence. And then, at last, they were at their destination.

From inside her mother’s private office, the same the queen had shared with her beloved Prince Albert when he was alive, Louise could hear familiar male voices. On no other day, under no less urgent circumstances, would she have dared interrupt a meeting between Victoria and her prime minister. But no one stood at the ready to stop them or give permission, and circumstances dictated action not protocol.

She rapped twice on the heavy oak door. Stephen Byrne didn’t even wait for a response. He pushed past her, shoved wide the door, and she followed his bold entrance into the room to face the five astonished faces of PM Gladstone, Gladstone’s secretary, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, her mother’s secretary, and the queen herself.

“Mama”—Louise belatedly thought to curtsy—“I apologize for the intrusion, but this gentleman has urgent business with you.”

Victoria turned cold eyes from her daughter to Byrne. “I instructed your superiors to allow you to report directly to me, to insure this new so-called Secret Service does not keep vital information from me. I also realize how impulsive Americans tend to be.” Her eyes narrowed and targeted him, as if he were a grouse she was about to dispatch. “But your report certainly can wait ten minutes, Mr. Byrne.”

Louise shook her head when Byrne let out a little grunt of frustration and seemed about to take a step back. “No. You must give that to her now!”

She waved her hand at the scrap of paper dangling from his fingertips. A sudden image leaped into her head of one of the no-doubt-by-now-dead rats hanging limply by its tail from Brown’s big fist. The difference being, this little piece of paper was far more dangerous than any rodent.

“Mama, this can’t wait. Please.”

Victoria scowled at her disapprovingly. “If this message is so very important, perhaps Mr. Gladstone should also know of its contents?”

Byrne cleared his throat. “Ma’am, I don’t think it’s a good—”

The queen silenced him with a look of bleak displeasure. “Mr. Rhodes,” she said, turning to the PM’s secretary, “please do the honor of reading to all present this message that is so critical it stops our government from working.”

The gaunt-featured man stepped forward, head bowed meekly. He smoothed his thin mustache with two fingers then gingerly plucked the square of paper from Byrne’s hand. He cleared his throat as he silently scanned the words that would remain forever implanted in Louise’s mind.

The man’s eyes widened in shock. “Oh dear,” he whispered.

“Mr. Rhodes,” Gladstone’s stentorious voice rumbled in warning. He nodded his head, enveloped in a cloud of white hair, toward the paper. “Proceed, sir.”

Rhodes ran a finger under his collar. “Beg pardon, but I’d rather not. Not, that is, in front of the ladies.”

“Read, Rhodes!”

The secretary’s eyes snapped obediently back to the note. He moistened his lips, swallowed audibly, then let the words tumble out all in one breath. “ ‘Where three got in on four legs another might on two. Does it take a dead princess to win freedom for our Irish brothers?’ ”

The room fell silent.

Louise looked at her mother, sitting absolutely still behind her desk in her widow’s black bombazine and crape, her plump fingers wearing only funereal jet rings, hands pressed flat against a gold-embossed blotter. But Victoria’s moon face did not lose its color as Louise had imagined it would. Rather, it blossomed into hot rage.

“Where did this foolish riddle come from? What does this mean, Mr. Byrne?”

“It means, ma’am, that we’ve just come from Princess Beatrice’s bedchamber, where she and her governess confronted three very large and hungry rats.”

“In the palace? Impossible.”

“No, ma’am, they were most definitely rats.”

Louise shot a glance at Byrne’s dark eyes and felt an unexpected emotional tug she couldn’t define. Although his gaze revealed nothing, and despite the seriousness of the threat to her sister, she had a feeling he was holding back a smile. She would have kicked him in the shin good and hard for seeing any humor in this most grave situation, if he’d been within reach. Shouldn’t they be discovering how this intruder had got in? Where he, or they, might be even now? And what if there was another visitation with far more dire consequences than a warning?

“It was terrifying, truly,” Louise said. “Bea is in such a state, and Miss Witherstone near apoplexy. Brown remains back there even now”—she shuddered at the thought—“eradicating the beasts.”

Victoria drew a deep breath, filling her ponderous bosom and letting it deflate again. “I see. Are we to assume this is the work of those Fenian madmen who have been setting off bombs in our city on behalf of the Irish rebels?” She looked pointedly at Byrne but didn’t wait for an answer. “Have you alerted our guardsmen?”

Gladstone had taken the note from his secretary. After reading it for himself he passed it to Disraeli, who barely let his eyes drift with disdain over its surface before hastily placing it on the corner of the queen’s desk.

“Brown will handle that, ma’am. Anyone leaving the palace will be stopped and questioned. It’s my suggestion that the wedding party, and all accompanying them, move to the carriages at once. Vacating the palace will allow Brown’s men to search for any other surprises from the Fenians or whoever may be to blame.”

Gladstone coughed into his lavender gloved hand. “My apologies, Your Majesty, for this unpleasantness. The Irish problem is a tangled one, but it is unconscionable that your family be exposed to—”

“Nevertheless, we are exposed, as you put it,” Victoria cut him off. “We will continue our discussion, Mr. Prime Minister, on our return from Balmoral, whenever my men tell me it’s safe. Louise, inform any of our Ladies of the Court who aren’t already in their carriages to move to them with the utmost haste.”

“Yes, Mama.” She turned to leave and was halfway to the door, only vaguely aware of Gladstone and Disraeli bidding her mother a safe journey, when Byrne’s deep voice made her prick up her ears.

“If I may have a word with you in private, ma’am?”

“Of course,” the queen said.

Louise kept on walking, intent on her mission. But she couldn’t help wondering what it was Byrne felt compelled to say that he didn’t want anyone but Victoria to hear.

Brown didn’t like him; that much was obvious. She had heard the Scot call the American “Raven” in a clearly mocking tone. Normally Brown’s craggy, bearded face screened his emotions. Anyone he didn’t like was simply denied access to her mother. He had that much power these days. Victoria took his advice on almost everything, much to the annoyance of her sons and ministers, both of whom viewed the Scot as opportunistic and crude.

Yet the queen seemed to trust this foreigner despite Brown’s disapproval.

How odd.

Nearly as odd as her reaction had been to Stephen Byrne back at the nursery. Ordering him about as if she were the queen or her older sister Vicky, who sometimes behaved even more pompously with the royal staff than their mother. Why had she become so defensive when she was around the man? She, who enjoyed the relaxed friendship of commoners from all stations in life. She who prided herself on treating everyone with equal cordiality.

It seemed that the roguish American brought out the worst in her. Or, at least, brought out something she wasn’t sure she could control.