The Wild Princess (10 page)

“How do you know?” She shook her head, laughing. “You can't just toss about outrageous theories like this, Mr. Byrne.”

“They aren't theories.”

“No?” She crossed her arms over her chest in a then-prove-it stance.

“I've found other evidence. They knew exactly how much charge to lay and how to time it to cause the most confusion. It's my guess they weren't planning on murdering any of the royal family. If some of her guard was killed in the attack that would be fine. But deaths in the family would result in public outrage and possibly turn opinion more firmly against their cause. What they need is leverage with Parliament.”

It dawned on her then, where he was going with this. “They intended to kidnap my mother?”

“Or you, Arthur, Leo, or Beatrice. I don't suppose it will matter so much who they snatch, as the purpose is likely to have in their possession any royal they can ransom in exchange for Irish separation.”

Louise narrowed her eyes at him. How dare he speak of her family with such familiarity? Yet he seemed unaware of having breached court etiquette. She gave a sniff. “You don't know my mother. She would never agree to blackmail. She'd stand the firmer in her resolve to retain her hold on the Irish.”

“You actually believe she'd sacrifice the life of one of her children for the good of the Empire?”

“I believe,” Louise said, unable to block past ugliness from her mind, “my mother would do anything in her power to get her own way. I sometimes think she imagines her personal desires as identical to ‘the good of the Empire.' ” She swiveled on her heel and started walking again, this time back toward the castle. Suddenly, the bracing morning air and solitude of the wild hills held less appeal. Who knew what or who might lurk in these woods? Maybe the American was right to urge caution.

Byrne fell into step beside her again.

They hiked the path side by side for several minutes in silence. She was about to tell him he needn't accompany her all the way back to the garden gate when it occurred to her that maybe she
did
want him here. If the Fenians had become so bold as to plan an attack in broad daylight on the queen's caravan, why should they not lurk outside the walls of one of the family estates to pick off an unsuspecting prince or princess?

“Where are you from, Mr. Byrne?” she asked, not so much curious as disliking his silence and wary of what he might be thinking. She hoped to God it had nothing to do with what she'd looked like with her dress bodice torn half off her.

“Texas. San Angelo, a little cattle town in the western part of the state.”

“Therefore your intriguing garb?” She raised an eyebrow.

He smiled and touched the brim of his hat. “It's practical, ma'am.”

They walked on, and she thought about him and all she didn't know about the man. “You don't sound like an uneducated man, Mr. Byrne.”

“They do have schools in Texas.”

She ignored his making fun of her. “Is that where you studied?”

“No. My mother was from out east. I attended college back where she grew up, in Connecticut. I'd be in New Haven or thereabouts still if it hadn't been for the war.”

“America's War between the States?”

“Yes.”

“You fought for the North?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

She waited for him to say more. When he didn't she couldn't help prodding. “I assume that means you weren't a traditional soldier?”

“I was under assignment directly to Mr. Lincoln.” The shadow of a smile disappeared from his lips. His chipped-granite expression warned her to tread carefully. Something about the conversation had rubbed him the wrong way.

“Your president's assassination was most terrible,” she said. “My mother was so shocked and troubled by it, she wrote a long letter of condolence to Mrs. Lincoln . . . then doubled the guardsmen kept at the royal residence.”

“Booth was a coward and a snake,” Byrne said. “To shoot a man, any unarmed man, from the back and without a single word of warning, with his wife sitting right there beside—”

Louise jerked to a stop and turned to stare at her mother's agent, aghast. “You make it sound as if you were
there
that night.”

For a long while he didn't answer. His gaze slipped away from hers and flitted about the gorse, never staying long on one spot.

“Yes.” The word seemed to rise from the depths of his soul and poison the air around them with his bitterness. “Had I been in the gallery behind the president, I'd have stopped Booth. Instead, I heard the shot from the hallway below.”

“Oh dear,” she murmured and touched his sleeve in sympathy.

He didn't seem to feel it, and she quickly withdrew her hand. “I wasn't technically on duty that night. But I should have . . . should have—” He shook his head. His eyes clouded with sadness.

There was nothing she could say. Her hand moved toward his arm again, but she pulled it back with the same caution as when approaching a hot stove. “You were Mr. Lincoln's bodyguard?”

“Not officially. I worked undercover for the Union during the war, a spy if you will. The information I gathered always went directly to Mr. Lincoln. After the war, as a civilian, I asked to be put on assignment in Washington, to continue on the president's security detail, but I was told he needed no one else.”

“And your knowledge of bombs?”

“Part of my job was to track Confederate soldiers intent on blowing up bridges, ammunition dumps, supply lines, and other things critical to the North's winning the war. Sometimes when I found a bomb, there wasn't time to summon the men trained to disarm them. I had no choice but to do it myself, or else trigger the thing to save lives but sacrifice a vital road or bridge.”

“So you learned by trial and error.” It seemed to her a dangerous way to train.

“Most of the devices were pretty simple.” He shrugged and started walking again, watching the ground as his boots crunched over the frost heaves and dead leaves. She followed along, matching his strides. “They were either meant to be set off by hand and thrown, or planted and triggered by pressure. Sometimes a mechanical trip wire was used to strike a flint and light the fuse after the dynamiteers were well clear. During that time, I discovered a few soldiers from the South who were particularly creative. Their work was nearly undetectable, and the materials they used were always the same.”

He held up the twine then produced—as if he were a magician performing a sleight-of-hand trick—a sliver of gray stone.

“Flint?” she guessed.

“Good Louisiana flint. So far as I know, there's none like it in all of England.” He looked at her, his meaning clear. She felt incapable of speech her throat had tightened so. He continued. “I believe the Fenians have recently recruited two of the best black powder men in America. I doubt that dodging their trap just once will put them off their game.”

Ten

Having done all he could by the end of the day to make certain the royals in residence at Balmoral were safe, Stephen Byrne took himself off for a strenuous ponder. The locations best suited to problem solving were, in his estimation, working men's pubs. Having obtained a stool at the end of the centuries-old oak bar in The Wooden Ox, not far down the road from the castle, he asked for a good dark stout and set to work on both it and his thoughts.

If he'd thought it necessary to station himself outside Louise's door and watch over her the night long to keep her safe, he would have. But Brown had the place locked up tighter than the Tower of London, his own men stationed at every entrance plus reinforcements ordered up from Aberdeen to patrol and post as sentries. So there seemed little need for him to lose sleep in a drafty hallway. How the princess had slipped past the guards that morning was beyond him. He imagined she'd spent a good part of her youth at Balmoral, and like as not, she and her siblings had discovered secret passageways they'd used in their play. He'd have to alert Brown to that possibility.

Aside from his confidence in the Scot's security measures, Byrne had another excuse for staying away from the castle. He expected the marquess would be paying a visit to his wife's bedroom, if only as a matter of form and to calm any untoward gossip among the court. But perhaps Lorne would attempt to perform his husbandly duty.

Byrne didn't like to think of the dandy, or any other man, touching Louise. Lurid images flashed through his mind, leaving him feeling raw.

Who could really say what went on between the couple? If anything at all. He'd seen them in the carriage during the trip north, sitting apart, never reaching out for each other, never holding hands or touching surreptitiously when others weren't watching as newlyweds always do. The younger princess wedged between them seemed to serve as a mutually agreed upon barrier.

Maybe Louise was just angry with her husband over a disagreement they'd had, and she was making her point by temporarily withdrawing her affection. Despite Lorne's attraction to partners of his own sex, he might still have relations with his wife. It wasn't unheard of for a man who favored other men's company to be capable of servicing a woman. The warmth they'd displayed at the wedding seemed real enough. It was only after their wedding night that a chill seemed to descend over them.

To Byrne's thinking, this was the very opposite of what should have been. Affection for a mate naturally grew with time.

A thought struck him then, and he chuckled. Might it be the marquess had attempted to fulfill his obligations in bed but failed to perform satisfactorily for the lady? If
he,
Byrne, entertained the princess in
his
bed, he'd be damned if she left it without rosy blooms in her cheeks and stars in her eyes.

Then another possibility came to him. Perhaps the man had demanded acts from her that had shocked her. Offended her. Hurt her.

The bastard.

Byrne's hand tightened on his glass. He had to make an effort to loosen his grip before it shattered under the pressure.
No use speculating,
he told himself. Whether or not Louise was married, whether or not she was happy or miserable—the woman was beyond his reach in every imaginable way. He might as well have designs on the famous Lillie Langtry or the queen herself—though that last thought was a singularly unappealing one. Whatever life held for Louise was none of his concern and beyond his control. There was little sense in working himself into a lather over it.

Byrne looked around the pub he'd chosen. When he'd first entered The Ox he sensed a ripple of nervousness, stifled conversation. He was a stranger in these parts. The farm boys and town's merchants took their time checking him out. But he hadn't come here to make friends and didn't want to encourage anyone to approach him. He cast a steely glare around the room before dropping his gaze into his foamy ale, signaling his lack of interest in friendly banter. He couldn't think while he was talking or listening to tall tales and local gossip. What he most needed to do tonight was try and figure out Rupert Clark's next move.

He had no doubt that it was Clark the Fenians had brought over from America. Clark with his brilliant red hair and missing fingers. He'd never met the man in person but had seen a photograph of him, standing in the front row in his uniform with his Confederate unit.

The black powder man's face was unremarkable—square jawed, clean shaven, pockmarked from childhood illness like many, his eyes dulled with sadness. In the photograph his hair color was impossible to tell, but he'd heard a description of the man from a prostitute who'd slept with him, a Union sympathizer. In the picture, Clark held the barrel of a rifle in his injured hand, showing only the thumb and index finger, the other three having been blown away. He could have hidden the maimed hand behind his back, but it appeared to Byrne that he was intentionally displaying his loss. As if the hand was his badge of courage.

Byrne knew the man's work only too well. He'd seen the deadly results. There was nothing more horrifying than what dynamite could do to a human body—the damage far more grisly than bayonet, gunshot, or even cannon wounds.

On the Edinburgh road, where he'd found the telltales of Clark's presence, he'd learned the master dynamiteer had an assistant. That was probably the only reason he'd found any evidence at all. It had been the other man's job to clean up before they retreated. Evidently, whoever he was, he wasn't as careful or as experienced as Clark.

There was another reason, one he hadn't mentioned to Louise, for his being sure that a trap had been laid to enable the Fenians to snatch, rather than murder, a member of the royal family. He'd discovered broken brush on the hillside above the road, signs of horses and riders. Twenty or more, he guessed. A small army of men had been lying in wait for the caravan. With the distraction of the explosions, and orders to grab just one member of the royal family they'd already selected, their odds for success were fairly high.

So now,
Byrne wondered,
would they try again?

Absolutely.

Right away, or later? And where? Those were the more difficult questions.

His head hurt from trying to puzzle it out. If he guessed wrong, missed a vital clue, the results might be catastrophic. The only advantage he had was that the Fenians didn't yet know that he knew their intentions. They would assume they still held the trump card—the element of surprise.

He called for another pint from the bartender, drank it down a little more slowly than the first. But before he could come to any theory worth trusting, he became aware of another stall in the conversation throughout the dim, smoke-filled pub. Another stranger had arrived.

Byrne kept his head down at the same angle, eyes fixed on his brew. He sensed motion coming toward him, tensed. But the newcomer passed on. Byrne kept his body and head still but shifted the angle of his gaze to follow the retreating figure.

Blond waves curled down the back of the man's neck. The fine fabric of his evening frock coat, light-colored waistcoat, and noble posture left no doubt in his mind who it was. The Marquess of Lorne had come alone, probably without Brown's or anyone else's knowledge except for the guard he must have bribed to let him pass. He'd bet the best horse in the queen's stable that Louise hadn't shared her secret means of escape with her husband. After all, here it was their honeymoon, and he was sneaking off for a sociable drink with his mates? More likely, come to prowl, Byrne speculated.

There were no women here. Only farm boys, townsmen and tradesmen, maybe a traveler or two. Lorne seemed familiar with the place. Byrne remembered that Balmoral, and therefore The Ox, wasn't far from the Campbell family's estate. Perhaps this pub was already a favorite haunt?

Lorne didn't take long to strike up a conversation with a young man at a table in the dark corner. The local boy finished his drink then left. Lorne stayed, waving off the barkeep's offer of another ale, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop. Biding his time. Then the marquess paid up and, with a casual air, walked out the door into the night.

Byrne sucked down a deep breath, argued with himself, stalled for another minute, then tossed his tab on the bar and followed out the door.

A full moon shone down on the village square and the few buildings surrounding it. The air smelled of clover, farmland dung, pine, and an oncoming frost. Byrne spotted Lorne standing a short ways off, hands in his pockets, looking at ease, as if he was simply enjoying the night air. At last he straightened, looked around, as if to get his bearings. The castle was off to the right. Lorne turned left.

Byrne gave him a head start then tailed him down the road, staying far enough back to remain cloaked by the darkness. After less than a quarter mile, Lorne stepped off the road and into a field of maize. He seemed to be heading toward a line of woods. Soon a light pricked out from among the trees, and the marquess adjusted his course toward it. Byrne stopped at the edge of the road and watched the lone figure continue across the moonlit field until he'd nearly reached the first trees. The light went out.

Byrne swore.

So the rumors and his guesses were true. He had no feelings one way or the other about another man's choice of bed partners. Let him poke where he pleased. Hell, what was the joke about lonely shepherds?

What set him to burning was the dishonor the man was doing his lovely wife. Had the marquess even consummated their marriage? What did he expect Louise to do for affection or even for simple sexual satisfaction? He didn't for a minute believe the commonly held belief that females of good family lacked sexual yearnings. In his experience, women of any and all ranks in society were equally passionate when with the right man.

A woman without a title might divorce her husband or, more likely, accept a series of lovers. But a princess didn't have the luxury of anonymity. Kings, princes, male nobility of lesser stature, were more or less expected to take mistresses. In some marriages contracted purely for the purpose of political alliance, the woman might even encourage her less-than-appealing husband to take to another woman's bed, rather than suffer his unwelcome attentions. But a queen or princess could not have a lover, or at least not admit to having one, without suffering dire consequences. In the not-so-distant past, queens had died for their indiscretions.

Byrne cast one final bleak look toward the shadowed line of woods then whipped around and marched back toward the public house. “None of your bloody concern,” he reminded himself. “Leave him to it.”

But after another two stouts on top of the ale, he still couldn't forget what he'd seen or dismiss what he knew. Anger swelled in him like a gouty foot.

Did Louise know? Of course she must. The woman was neither blind nor a fool. But the fact that her husband hadn't been able to control his sexual appetite for even one month after their wedding—Byrne just didn't understand that.

He hurt for her. He felt the insult as a dull, throbbing pain at the back of his skull.

But what could he do about it?

On loan to the Queen's Secret Service, he was expected to protect members of the royal family. Technically, that included Lorne, who hadn't yet reappeared at the pub or passed by on the road outside the window, where Byrne had stationed himself at a table, keeping an eye out. What if the marquess stayed away from the castle all night? What if this sneaking about became routine? If Lorne wasn't discreet, he'd cause both Louise and the queen great embarrassment. What with all this Irish trouble, perhaps he'd even get himself killed.

Byrne conversed with the dregs of his third stout, which had begun nagging him toward action.
No! I'll damn well not hike off into those woods to drag the fellow home by the scruff of his neck like a truant schoolboy.
On the other hand, sooner or later, he'd have to deal with this mess.

Despite all attempts to calm himself with yet another pint, he was still seething when the door to the pub swung open and the doorway blossomed into a tartan kilt wrapped around a powerful package of muscle. John Brown made his way to the bar in two strides the length of an omnibus, and held up a pair of thick fingers. The barkeep brought him his drinks and quickly retreated, as if taking cover at the first sign of a gale.

The man must have seen Brown drunk before.

Sensing it was the wrong thing to do, but unable to stop himself—emboldened as he was by his beverages—Byrne left his table. He wove his way over to the bar and slung a hip over the stool next to Brown's. The Scot seemed not at all surprised to see him. He nodded at the barkeep, who brought Byrne yet another foamy glass. Byrne's head was already swimming, but it was poor manners to turn down a man's gift.

“All quiet up on the hill?” Byrne asked.

“Quiet as can be.” Brown drank deeply. “ 'Bout done in myself, what with these crazies pestering HRM. Any idea what they have in mind next?”

He didn't need to say who
they
was. The Fenians. “Not a clue. You?”

“Naw, laddie. Wish that I did.” He ordered up another drink for himself.

Byrne declined a fifth . . . or was it a sixth? When he shook his head, it felt like it was sloshing with a brew of beer and worries. He knew he should keep his mouth shut. It had a habit of getting him into trouble. But he couldn't ignore what he'd just witnessed.