Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9)
By: Rhys Bowen
Louise chuckled. “And that little Margaret Rose—she’s a firecracker. My, she’s going to be a handful when she grows up. She asked me if princesses could still have people’s heads chopped off.”
I laughed but I noticed that Princess Beatrice hardly smiled. “I’m going to have a word with that boy,” she said. “The Prince of Wales, I mean. It’s about time he learned that duty and family come before anything. He has been born to a great heritage. If Mama saw the way he was carrying on now, she’d turn in her grave. And Papa—he’d give the boy a horsewhipping and tell him to buck up or else, wouldn’t he, Louise?”
“I expect he would. But times have changed, Bea. There has been a great war. Young people ask themselves if anything really matters, because life is so precarious, don’t they, Georgiana?”
“Maybe those who remember the war. I was too young and things certainly matter to me.”
“You’re a good girl.” She nodded. “A credit to the family. Our mother would have approved.”
I had been looking around me. “This is an interesting room, Great-Aunt Louise,” I said. “Are those sculptures modern or from classical times?”
She gave a delightful peal of laughter at this. “Not modern by your standards. I did them as a young woman.”
“You are a sculptress? They are wonderful.”
She nodded in appreciation. “I did have a certain talent. I had to give it up. It requires too much strength to chisel away at marble. Do you have artistic talents?”
“None at all; in fact I’m not sure I have any talents,” I said.
“You should never sell yourself short,” she said. “Young women are brought up to prize modesty. I think one should shout one’s abilities from the mountaintops.”
She looked at my face and laughed. “My mother approved of my sculpting, but not of my views. I have always been a great champion of women. I championed the suffrage movement, you know, and I had a woman doctor for years before it became fashionable.”
When I looked surprised Princess Beatrice added, “She had to keep it from dear Mama, of course. She would never have approved.”
“You young people are so lucky,” Princess Louise said wistfully. “In our day a girl was never allowed out unchaperoned, was she, Bea? A match was made for her. No career was possible for a girl of good family.”
“It’s not much easier these days to find a career,” I said. “Too many unemployed men.”
“Ah yes,” she said. “I see men sleeping in the park when I go for my early morning walk. It distresses me. Such a sad time for so many. But let us not dwell on sad things. You are here to celebrate a wedding in the family.”
A gust of wind moaned down the chimney, sending sparks and soot out into the room. I remembered what I had seen that afternoon.
“Tell me,” I said, “is the palace haunted?”
The two great-aunts exchanged a look. “Oh yes, extremely haunted.” Louise gave me a mischievous grin. “You’ll bump into ghosts everywhere you go. Most of them royal, of course. Our ancestors, keeping an eye on us. I don’t think any of them is malicious, so nothing to worry about.”
“I saw a woman this afternoon,” I said. “She wore a long white dress and her hair was piled on her head in pretty little curls.”
“Ah, that would be Princess Sophia,” Princess Louise said, glancing across at her sister for confirmation. “We’ve both seen her, haven’t we, Bea? George the Third’s daughter. Never allowed to marry, poor girl. Kept secluded here all her life. They say she had an incestuous affair with her brother the Duke of Cumberland, and also had an affair with her father’s equerry. Either way, she produced an illegitimate child. The baby was whisked away and the whole thing was kept hushed up, but I think she walks the halls looking for that child, or maybe for the man who fathered it.”
I thought of poor Princess Sophia, spending her life in this seclusion, and then having her child taken from her. No wonder she wandered the halls.
“Most of the other ghosts prefer the royal state rooms,” Princess Beatrice said. “So we don’t encounter them often. But the clock tower is supposed to be haunted.”
“The clock tower?” I asked.
She nodded. “At the entrance to the courtyard behind us. Several times I’ve seen a strange light glowing there. But I’ve lived here long enough that ghosts no longer bother me. They do result in a large turnover in servants throughout the palace, I’m afraid. The lower classes are not used to meeting our ancestors on staircases.” She chuckled again. She really was delightful.
We had a good dinner of mulligatawny soup, roast pheasant and apple dumplings, a pleasant evening, and as I said good-bye I wondered why I had never thought of visiting the aunts before. I supposed because I had spent my formative years far away in a Scottish castle and we’d never been introduced. And it’s not quite as easy to drop in on a royal person as it would be if my aunts had been ordinary.