Seducing the Princess (23 page)

The day edged toward dusk, the western sky a band of fire opal as Marie Devereaux set out from Osborne House. She’d had to wait until Beatrice finished dressing for dinner and went downstairs to dine in private with the queen, before she could leave. Now, because she didn’t want to be stopped by the guards, she took the narrow stairs into the tunnel that led beneath the garden and toward the sea. The cavern stank of decay and mould. Cobwebs, thick and cloying, draped across the passage every few feet, so that she had to wave them aside with one arm, protecting her face from their sticky filth with her other. Clearly, the tunnel hadn’t been used in a very long time. Beatrice had mentioned its existence one day, along with a story of its design as a secret escape route for the monarch, should the house ever come under attack.

She came up at the other end, into what appeared to be an abandoned boat shed, now used for gardening tools. She followed the path along the ledge, high above the fishing fleet’s beach. Below and stretching out seemingly forever, the vast gray-blue ocean lay. Already the lower rim of the sun’s disk was brushing the horizon; in minutes, night would fall. Charcoal clouds raced overhead, driven by a gathering wind. The air smelled of rain, crackled with the warnings of an oncoming storm, pricking at her skin.

She’d best get back to the house before the sky broke wide open. But first, she had to do what she’d come to do—put an end to this wicked business with Gregory MacAlister.

An hour earlier, Marie had been cutting flowers for the vases in Beatrice’s room. Gregory whispered to her as he’d passed her in the garden, “Apologies owed.” He flashed that caramel-warm smile of his. “Meet me at the stone bench overlooking the beach?”

She’d felt relieved that he no longer seemed angry or violent. Maybe he really was sorry for hitting her. Maybe he had decided to give up his insane plan of interfering with Beatrice’s and Henry’s courtship. All of Beatrice’s letters that were supposed to go to Germany, Marie had kept back from the courier. All of Henry’s notes from the Continent she’d taken from the royal mail sac and pocketed. She was ashamed for her actions. But the alternative—refusing to do as Gregory demanded—had seemed unthinkable at the time. The consequences were just too awful to contemplate.

She’d lied to Beatrice—telling her the old stable master had followed them from London and struck her. She’d been desperate and it was all she could think to say at the time. So foolish.

Now, despite the terrible personal cost she’d pay, Marie had decided she must confess all to her princess. Luckily, she’d foreseen the need to protect herself and had collected evidence that would ruin Gregory MacAlister, should he threaten her again. Tonight she’d free herself from him—come what may.

Marie stood beside the rough-hewn granite bench overlooking the ocean. Wave after ferocious wave smashed over the rocks below. The dark sea boiled tonight, but she shivered in the chill of the salty spume as it feathered up over the bluff from below. A bad night it would be, windows rattling, wind howling. Nasty. Evil.

“You beat me here,” a cheerful voice shouted above the sea’s crash.

“I did.” She spun around and checked his eyes to gauge his mood. They were a soft undefined hue, devoid of emotion, showing no sign of the fury she’d seen in them the day he’d hit her. The bruise on her cheek had taken days to fade, he’d struck her that hard. “It is cold. I want to go back to the house, Gregory. I have something to say. But first, why is it you wanted to meet here—an apology you said?”

“Yes. You see, I was out of control. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I honestly didn’t.”

He sounded sincere. She studied his eyes again; they revealed nothing. “
Ecoutez moi
, Gregory, it is just as well we are talking tonight. I cannot do this anymore. You don’t need me anyway.” A flicker from his eyes, just that and nothing more. A warning? She rushed her words. “Henry and Beatrice have stopped writing to each other. The romance, it is dead, if that is what you intended. You said this was necessary to protect the princess, but I do not believe that. I refuse to be involved in your mean tricks any longer.”

He shrugged. “I had a feeling you’d back out. Must be your Catholic upbringing. Put the fear of God in you, did it?”

“
Oui. Exactement
,” she murmured. The way he was looking at her made her squirm. Her stomach churned. “I don’t deserve Beatrice’s trust, not after what I have done. I won’t say anything bad about you, I promise. I’ll tell her it was my mischievousness. I’ll say I was jealous, not having a man of my own.”

“And will you also tell her that you were never married but had a lover? A priest no less, who gave you a child—the bastard you’ve keep hidden away in Paris.”

She stared at him in disgust. “No! Your threatening to leak my past to the Court was the only reason I helped you.” Fury flared in her veins, throbbed in her temples until her whole head hurt. This was the sort of reaction from him she’d feared. But she wasn’t without a weapon of her own, a threat she would make good if forced to it. “If you dare to reveal—

He held up a hand to silence her. His voice came to her so low she could barely hear him above the cacophony of wind and sea. “Marie, if your adultery is revealed, Beatrice will have no say in your fate. The queen will know you’ve lied to her about your past. A childless widow, you claimed. But you were a priest’s whore. You won’t be allowed near Beatrice again. Victoria will ban you from the Court, from London most likely.” He grinned. “Fornicators need not apply.”

“You’re a wicked, wicked man.” She was too quick for him. Her hand flew out, slapping him hard across his mocking face. Spinning around, she started to march away.

She managed two steps.

His long arm shot out, fingers latching around her arm. “Don’t. You. Turn your back on me!” Gregory roared. His eyes brimmed over with sooty hatred. “The thing of it is
, ma chere
Marie—” He hauled her back toward him, as if he were reeling in a trout on a line. “—I don’t trust you. I never have. But I thought that knowing your secret would keep you honest.”

“There is nothing honest about stealing what doesn’t belong to you!” she shouted.

“You fucked a priest! You stole from God. Don’t play the innocent with me.”

He ground his teeth and gripped her harder the more desperately she struggled. “But you’re right about one thing. I no longer need you.”

He swung her around to his other side. The ocean side. Her feet landed barely a foot from the crumbling shale edge. She gasped, looked down, closed her eyes against the dizzying sight—black rocks, crashing surf. Hell.

“
S’il vous plait, non
!” she screamed. “Please. You can’t mean to kill me.”

“What’s to stop me?” He used his body to block her escape, to shove her still closer to the edge. Chips of stone fell from beneath her slippers and sprinkled over the edge and into the abyss. “They’ll find out.” She sobbed, shaking her head violently. “They’ll know it was you.”

“I bloody well doubt that.” His hands loosened on her arms, but she knew he wasn’t letting her go. He only wanted to make sure she didn’t take him with her.

Before she could even think how to save herself, his fists came up to center on her chest…and pushed.

She screamed. Arms flailing, hands clutching for his jacket, she sensed her left foot had already slipped over the edge. Her right foot shot forward seeking firm ground, missed.

Marie felt herself go weightless.

But, in the second before she plunged, she saw something amazing. Reflected in Gregory MacAlister’s eyes, she glimpsed her own face, lips lifted in a secret smile of triumph.

Don’t you know a mother will always protect her child?

“You’ll hang!” she screamed into the snarling wind. “I
kept
them, you bastard.”

Even as she plummeted, his silhouette shrinking against the dying light of the stormy sky, she wondered if he’d heard her. It didn’t matter. He’d never find the damning evidence she’d hidden. But Beatrice, or one of the maids, would. And her child? She’d made certain her little girl would be cared for—better than Marie herself ever could, had she lived.

It was a rapid descent. The rocks came up fast. A single vicious jolt of pain when her body broke across them, before the chill of the incoming waves mercifully numbed flesh and bone, taking away her last breath.

Then Marie was away…away with the angels.

It grew dark early. All day long clouds had rolled in, blanketing the sky. Building thicker, higher, blacker. Then came the wind across the Solent, the normally calm body of water separating the island from the English mainland.

Beatrice sat with her mother in the salon. They were still not speaking—at least the queen wasn’t. But the queen summoned her daily nonetheless, expecting her to be nearby. As if she might, on a whim, decide to readmit her to the human race.

Ponsonby entered the room, his white hair no less perfectly groomed than any other day, although an hour earlier Beatrice had seen him outside in the yard, among swirling leaves, dust and the first stinging rain. He been talking with two men she recognized as coming from East Cowes, the nearest village. His black jacket and trousers now looked as if they’d been brushed within an inch of their life.

“Yes, Ponsonby?” Victoria said when he stopped in front of her chair.

“Your Majesty, I fear it will be a bitter, mean night. We’d best have the men secure the shutters.”

“We’ve weathered worse at Osborne House,” the queen said without looking up from her correspondence. “But yes, if you think it wise. Get boys from the stable to lend a hand. Put that strong young man from Scotland in charge of them. He’s quite capable.”

“MacAlister, ma’am?”

Beatrice smiled a little, hearing his name. Yes, he was strong. Yes, he was capable. Her mother’s trust in him gave her another taste of hope for the future.

“Yes. Gregory.” The queen looked up at Beatrice, sitting nearby and drawing her mother in profile on a sketch pad. “I’m glad we brought him with us, Baby. He’s useful and most pleasant. Mr. McAlister reminds me of—”

“I know who Gregory reminds you of, Mama. But he’s not John Brown.”

It suddenly struck her that the queen had actually spoken to her. To
her
, directly. Without the usual intermediaries—
Tell my daughter I wish for her to…

For months there had been no verbal communication between them, only the endless notes passed by staff and servants. Now, suddenly, the woman was talking again, as if nothing had happened. No apology. No explanation. Just carrying on a seemingly normal conversation.

At least, this was a sign her relationship with her mother might be saved.

Beatrice lifted her gaze to the heavens in relief. Why was being a daughter so difficult? She decided the best thing to do was not to comment on the restoration of civility. Perhaps her mother had decided the proper penance had been paid?

“A younger version of Brown perhaps,” her mother said.

“Yes. But a darker one.” The thought came to Beatrice out of nowhere. Maybe it was the weather—so very oppressive with the storm coming on.

“Really? You think so? I see him as more fair—at least his hair is a lighter color.”

“That’s not what I meant.” What did she mean? She liked Greg. More than liked actually. He was intriguing, a bit of a mystery. And the few times he’d touched her she’d reacted—not unpleasantly.

But sometimes when they rode out together, and he wasn’t aware she was watching him, she imagined seeing the shade of the man. His ghost. His soul. She’d heard it claimed that, out of the corner of one’s eye, one might glimpse the true nature of a person as a pale, shimmering sort of aura—the personal essence they hid from the world. Strange, really, that she should think of that now. She wasn’t normally prone to superstition or mysticism. She hoped she wasn’t turning into a dotty old crone, inventing apparitions, obsessing over the trivial or nothing at all.

Beatrice drew a few more lines then gave up with a sigh. “I’ll never be another Louise.” She set down drawing pad and pencil with a discouraged sigh.

“Thank the Lord for that,” her mother muttered. “As fine an artist as she is, your sister gave me more trouble than all the rest of you girls together.”

Beatrice frowned at her. “You never really told me what came between the two of you. Something happened, didn’t it? Something terrible when she was young.”

“Certain matters are beneath discussion,” the queen said with a sniff.

It was always this way. The most intriguing gossip about events in their family, Beatrice was deprived of knowing. “We must protect our innocent Baby,” she’d heard her mother say more than once to one or another of her relations.

Was she forever to remain Baby in her mother’s eyes? In the eyes of the world? Beatrice felt a surge of rebellion. “I’m going for a walk.” She stood up.

“In the dark? With this horrid weather so near?”

“You’ve dragged me out in worse at Balmoral.” Miserable carriage rides in the freezing Scottish drizzle. Oh how her bones had ached!

“But that was in daylight and in a covered carriage,” her mother protested.

Suddenly inspired, Beatrice decided to use one of her mother’s own arguments. “Yes, and sometimes a little fresh air
is
necessary. I remember hearing that from you often enough, Mama, when you wished to escape a meeting with one of your least favorite ministers.”

The queen laughed. “And what do you have to escape from but a warm, well-lit room?”

“Oh, please,” Beatrice murmured under her breath. Then, a bit louder, “I’ll take Marie for company.”

Beatrice returned to her room. When she didn’t find the French girl there she tapped on the connecting door that led to her lady-in-waiting’s smaller room. There was no answer.

Annoyed that Marie had disappeared and would now need hunting down, Beatrice took her cloak from the chiffarobe, wrapped it around her shoulders and ran down the stone steps to a side door that led directly into the garden. Wasn’t that where the girl had said she was going? To cut fresh flowers before darkness closed in. Or had that been earlier in the day?

When she stepped out into the evening air, the wind rushed at her, fiercer than she’d expected. A gritty spray stung her face, even though it wasn’t yet raining very hard. She pulled the fur-lined hood over her head to protect her hair. Marie had pressed hot waves into it and arranged it; she would be annoyed to have to do it all over again before dinner.

The wind played impossible tricks, sucking her breath away even as it struck her full in the face. She gasped and looked back at Osborne House. The staff had made short work of sealing it up tight, shutters latched, their sturdy slats blocking the glow of gaslights from behind scores of windows. She turned her back on the immense stone structure. She hungered for adventure, not a crypt.

No one was about now, although it wasn’t late. Even the staff from the stables and the kitchens in the lower level of the main house looked to be tucked up for the night. Strangely, their absence cheered her. She felt daring to be out here alone. She felt awakened from a long, unnatural sleep.

Beatrice walked briskly through the garden, along the path that skirted the Swiss cottage where they’d played as children, to the top of the wooden stairs that led down to the beach. The rain had stopped, at least for the moment. Without the light of moon or stars, she couldn’t see the sand below. For all she knew, the storm tide was running so high that the ocean had devoured the beach entirely.

She stood looking out over the black sea until the dampness in the air permeated her clothing and prickled her skin. Clearly Marie wasn’t out here. Beatrice took the long way back, through the garden and around to the front of the house. She was goosepimpled and chilled to the bone by the time she reached the entrance foyer.

Their butler rushed at her from his station. “Princess, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She laughed plucking her hood off. “Why does everyone in this household fuss so over a little weather?” She felt brave, fearless—having ventured out when no one else would.

An amused spark lit the old man’s eyes. “Yes, Your Highness. If you pardon me, you are so like the queen. How she loves a good storm.”

I am not like her!
she wanted to scream, but didn’t.

He took her cloak from her. “I’ll ring for your lady, shall I, when this has dried?”

“Yes,” she said distractedly. “I’m sure I won’t need it until tomorrow.”

He nodded his gray head. “The locals say tomorrow will be a day to not venture out at all.”

“We’re well provisioned,” she said. “I shouldn’t worry about spending a cozy day or two indoors.” But the idea of being cut off from the mainland was a bit unnerving.

When Beatrice reached her bedchamber she found it as empty as when she’d left. This time she didn’t knock on the door connecting her room with Marie’s. She flung it open in annoyance and marched straight in, prepared to scold the girl for her neglect. Instead, she stood stock still and looked around. The bed wasn’t mussed from having been lain upon—so Marie hadn’t taken a nap and overslept. A Bible rested, as it always did, on the bedside table beside a carafe of water and clean glass. The room was in perfect order.

It wasn’t at all like Marie to neglect her duties, or to be absent from Beatrice for long periods of time. The stone mansion was spacious, but there were only a few places the French girl was likely to spend any time: the library, gaming room, one of the smaller salons where they both liked to read. And outside, the garden through which Beatrice had just now passed. But Marie had often commented that she didn’t enjoy strolling the grounds unless the weather was fair, so there was small chance she was walking for pleasure in the deepening gloom and wicked wind tonight.

Maybe she’d gone to the kitchen to fetch something to eat?

Beatrice arrived at the basement level of the house and approached the community room where the servants took their meals. The door was shut. She hesitated, but then there was no other way. At her knock, the clatter of pots and clink of glassware stopped, as did all conversation.

Mrs. Herrington, Osborne’s cook, came to the door and opened it. “Your Highness?” She craned her neck to look up and to her right, checking the service bells. “I didn’t hear you ring.”

“I didn’t,” Beatrice said. “I was wondering if Marie was with you.”

The woman frowned. “Why no, would there be a reason? She didn’t miss lunch, did she?”

“No, and I realize dinner will be served soon, but I’m having trouble, well…finding her.”

The woman chuckled then immediately sobered. “I’m sure she ain’t doin’ anything improper, Your Highness. Not Marie. I might worry ’bout some of these local girls hired on temporary for the queen’s stay. Flirting with the staff gentlemen, if you know what I mean. But not Lady Marie.”

It hadn’t occurred to Beatrice that Marie might find someone here on the island that she liked better than anyone in London. After all, she had been acting odd lately. Perhaps her behavior had something to do with a man?

“Never mind. I’m sure she’ll turn up. If you see her, please let her know I’ve been looking for her.”

“Of course, Princess.”

Beatrice climbed two floors of thickly carpeted stairs, passing only a few maids scurrying silently along the high-ceilinged corridors. Somehow she still half-expected to find Marie—contrite, offering a breathless explanation in French for her absence—when she arrived at their rooms. But when she opened the door to Marie’s room, the girl still was not there.

Beatrice tentatively stepped inside, leaving the door open between the rooms. She crossed the blue Persian wool carpet to Marie’s bedside table, opened drawers and shuffled around inside, searching for anything that might tell her where the girl had gone. Nothing out of the ordinary there. She picked up the Bible and bent back the spine to splay open the pages, shaking the book. A sheet of paper fell from between pages to the floor. Instinctively, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that no one had entered the room behind her. She hated the idea of being caught snooping. But what else was she to do?

She picked up the paper.

It was a letter, addressed to Marie at Buckingham Palace.

Beatrice immediately thought of all the letters she’d written to Henry. Notes of love that he’d ignored. Who had written to Marie? The girl had kept the letter. It much be important to her.

With only a twinge of guilt, she unfolded the plain white sheet. The writing was in French, but that wasn’t a problem. All of Victoria’s children had been taught French, as well as Latin and German, from the time they were very young.

She told herself she’d only read a little. She easily translated the words:

Charlotte is well. Cheerful little soul as ever. Quite the good girl.

Suddenly ashamed for prying, Beatrice refolded the note without reading further and stuck it back where it had been. Marie’s sister writing about her niece? No, her lady-in-waiting had told her she had no family. She had no living parents or siblings. A friend then. How nice.

Beatrice returned to her room and sat on the canopied bed, feeling a little at a loss. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d had to dress or undress herself. She wasn’t entirely sure she could reach all of the tiny buttons down her back and hoped there was a button hook handy if Marie didn’t return soon. The dampness of the fabric, from being out in the elements, was becoming uncomfortable. She shivered. Maybe she should summon one of the upstairs maids to help her? But that thought just increased her sense of uselessness. Surely she was capable of changing her own clothing.

When another half hour had passed, and she knew the queen would soon expect her for dinner, she started tearing off her soggy clothing as best she could. She dried herself and, with much struggling, managed to get herself loosely laced into a fresh corset and her pale blue dinner dress.