The Wild Princess (24 page)

Twenty-seven

Head down, Byrne wove through the maze of halls, corridors, and back ways of the palace. He must have taken a wrong turn or two because when he looked up he found himself in an unfamiliar wing of the castle. Lost again—this time due to his bleak mood.

Bleak because of the princess's cool dismissal of him as a man who might ever be capable of arousing passion in her. And because she'd put him in his place as nothing more than a servant.

He stopped walking, looked around, and cursed the damn architects for not including directional signs.

“You look like a big old vulture, hunched over like that,” a youthful voice said.

He turned toward the room to his right, its door open and Princess Beatrice standing in it. She studied him with unabashed interest.

He managed a smile for her. “It's the coat. Flaps about like horrific wings, don't you think?” He demonstrated by waving his arms.

Beatrice giggled. “Mother calls you her Raven. Is that why?”

“Part of it,” he said. An idea struck him. He'd been so distracted by his unsuccessful search for Darvey, and even more so by Louise's kiss and subsequent rejection, he hadn't followed up on his plan to locate a gossipy palace insider. And here, before him, stood a likely candidate—a young, bored princess.

“May I ask your help, Your Highness?”

Beatrice's eyes sparkled all the brighter. She tossed her blond curls and playfully curtsied, as if he were the royal and she the subject. “Of course, Mr. Raven sir.”

“My sense of direction always deserts me when I'm in this part of the palace. Would you be so kind as to point me toward the courtyard?”

She turned to peer over her shoulder, back into the room she'd just left. “My governess is napping,” she whispered. “I'll walk with you, to make sure you don't get turned around again.”

“Is that allowed?”

She laughed, and he heard a little of Louise in her. “Walking with a gentleman?”

“Without your governess or one of your sisters as chaperone.”

She sniffed. “If Louise can run all over London unattended, I can walk from one side of our home to the other with my mother's agent.” Beatrice batted feathery blond lashes at him.

He stopped himself from laughing, unsure whether she was seriously flirting or just playing with him, as young as she was, not yet fifteen. Louise must have, at one time, been this innocent, this unaware of her own power as a woman, and her own vulnerability.

He observed the girl out of the corner of his eye as they walked. Beatrice must have been eight or nine years old at the time of the disappearance of Louise's lover. How much information would she have been privy to at that time? And how much might she remember?

There was only one way to find out, but he needed to maneuver cautiously toward those questions. “I was with your sister just last night,” he began then lowered his voice as if speaking in confidence. “She has asked me to look up an old friend of hers.”

Beatrice stopped walking, turned to him, and lifted her nose, as if sniffing a secret about to unfold. “What kind of a friend?”

“Can you guess?”

“Amanda is her best friend, but Louise knows where she is, of course. They see each other all the time.”

“She must have made many friends while she was studying at the art school.”

Beatrice frowned. “I don't think so. Not special ones, though she's kept in touch with some of the girls. Mary Reinhart is one, I think. She was very cozy with—” She broke off and blinked up at Byrne. “But I'm not supposed to talk about
him
.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “A boy. Yes, I suppose some people might not understand. Was it . . . let me see—Donovan Heath?”

Beatrice grinned. “Yes-s-s.” She covered her mouth with one hand before launching with enthusiasm into the forbidden topic. “You guessed. So I didn't tell you, did I?” He shook his head. Beatrice laughed. “Louise told me all about him. We shared a bedroom back then with one of my other sisters. Donovan was all Louise ever talked about.” She rolled her eyes. “Louise used to sneak off during her lunch break at the school and walk with him in the park.”

“Well, that's not so awful,” he said as they continued on their way, moving through an entire wing devoted to government offices. “Just a stroll in the park.”

She tugged on a golden strand of hair and pouted. “That's just what I said too. But she was still afraid Mama might find out.”

“Would you tell your mother if you had a beau?”

“Probably not now. But I was such a baby then.”

“And now you're much more mature and have your own thoughts on life . . . and love?” he prompted.

The youngest princess glowed at his compliment. “I do have a theory,” she whispered, “about Louise and that boy.”

“And it is?”

Beatrice stopped walking and leaned against a tapestry-covered wall, hands tucked behind her back, eyes wide. “I always felt so confused in those days. Such strange things happened.”

He tilted his head to encourage an explanation.

“Like the way Louise was acting. She stopped talking to me, you see. Stopped telling me about the school and most particularly about Donovan. She got very angry when I asked about either of them.”

“Angry,” he said.

“Yes. I thought Louise and Donovan must have had a fight and she was sad about it. Then Mama took her out of the school, and that put Louise in an even worse mood. Louise and Mama shouted at each other all the time. When Louise wasn't acting angry, she was crying, but she refused to tell me why she was upset.”

“Did her art mean as much to her then as it does now?”

“I don't know. I suppose it did. So you're thinking maybe she was furious with Mama for withdrawing her?”

He nodded.

She shrugged and started walking again. “I guess it's possible. But I don't think that's all of it.” She hesitated. “I think that boy broke her heart. He ran away or maybe another girl took him away from Louise. She refused to talk about him at all. You should have seen her. She was miserable. She cried for days and days.”

“Losing your first love is very traumatic,” he said, following her lead as they turned another corner.

Beatrice smiled dreamily. “Just having a first love at all, I think, would be grand.” She gave a quick look over her shoulder, back the way they'd come, as if worried someone might be following them. “I just remembered something.”

“Yes?”

“Louise would probably kill me if I told you this. She'd say it was too personal to discuss with a man. With anyone, really, not in the family.”

“Oh?”

“But I don't care.” She beamed at him. “You're rather nice.”

“Thank you. I like you too,” he said, meaning it.

She glowed all the brighter.

He wondered if he ought to back off now and not put her into the awkward position of going against her sister's—not to mention her mother's—wishes. Before he could say anything more, the little princess was rushing into her story.

“You see, my mother's women's doctor was summoned to the palace one day. They say he used to come and go all the time—Mama was always having babies while Papa was alive. But then after Papa died there was little reason unless she felt a pain or fell ill. We didn't even know he was here that day until one of my mother's ladies of the bedchamber came to summon Louise to see him. Which seemed to me very, very strange indeed, since he never came for any of
us
. I mean, why would he?”

“Why indeed?”

“Anyway, Louise seemed very upset but she went with the woman to see the doctor. When she came back she was sobbing and wouldn't explain why.”

“Did you ask her what was wrong, whether she was ill?”

“Yes, of course. I was worried for her. I thought she was dying or something. But she wouldn't tell me anything. Then, maybe three or four months later, Louise started getting fat and wouldn't undress when anyone else was in the room.”

Byrne mentally shuddered. He didn't like where this was going. Not at all. “What about her maid?” he asked.

Beatrice shook her head. “Louise just said she wasn't pretty anymore, and so why should she want anyone to see her all fat. Mama hated us to get fat, you see. It was fine for Mama, but not for us. Anyway, before I could tell Louise that it didn't matter, I'd love her even if she was immense as an elephant, she was gone.”

“Gone?” he asked.

“Yes. One day Louise told her maid to pack a trunk of clothes for her and all of her art supplies, and off she went to Osborne House.”
On the Isle of Wight,
he thought. This was the strange retreat from the family he'd already heard about. “And she stayed there for three months, and we weren't allowed to go with her.”

“That sounds odd.”

“Very,” she agreed. “Mama told us she was studying French with a special tutor, and we were to allow her this time alone to better concentrate on that and on her art.”

“But you don't believe this was the real reason?”

“No.” The little princess pursed her lips in thought. “When Louise came back to London, she was thin again, weepy, and refused to attend any court functions with Mama. She wouldn't smile at anyone or play with me. It was as if she'd changed into another person. A sad, cold, ghosty thing.”

“And now?”

Beatrice pointed to a door, which he pushed open and into the courtyard. They both stepped outside. “Now she's better, kinder, sweeter to me . . . but not the same as she was. I still don't think she's happy.”

Byrne felt touched by the loss that shadowed the young princess's eyes. Within the royal family, Louise and Beatrice were closer in age than many of the other girls. Beatrice was the last of the five princesses, the youngest of all of the nine children.

“There are different kinds of happiness,” he said. “And Louise was then, what? Eighteen or nineteen?”

“About that, I guess.” Beatrice looked up at an open window on the second floor. From inside the room, maids chattered and laughed at their work. “I've always wondered . . .”

“About?”

“You won't repeat this to anyone—especially not to Louise?” Her pretty eyes pleaded.

“Of course not.”

“Well then—” She leaned in closer to him. “I've always wondered if Louise had a baby.”

He looked at her solemnly. Hadn't the same possibility come to his mind more than once? “Donovan's baby?”

“Yes. I've thought about that a lot, Mr. Raven. Maybe that's why Mama sent her away. So that no one would know when she had it. No one would ever see it.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Did you ask Louise about this?”

She observed him with something close to horror. “No! How could I? I didn't want to make her sadder.”

Something occurred to him. “Do you know the name of your mother's physician?”

“I did once, I think. But I've forgot now. Mama dismissed him soon after all this stuff happened.” She sighed. “Do you think Donovan was sad too—that Louise didn't have her baby? And maybe that's why he went away?”

“I don't know, Your Highness.” It was all he could do to answer her, his throat was so tight, his gut a mass of knots.

What did they do to you, Louise? What did they
do
?

If Byrne had been in a black mood before, by the time Beatrice left him in the courtyard, he was nearly blind with fury. Wicked possibilities swirled through his mind. Victoria, who had married her daughter off to a man who couldn't possibly make her happy, had meddled in Louise's life before. What had happened between mother and daughter that had so disturbed Louise she'd refused to participate in court functions for months after her return from Osborne House? And why—when the family, often accompanied by the entire court, traveled together—was the fourth princess banished alone to the Isle of Wight?

He could think of only one possibility.

An abortion. Performed late in the princess's pregnancy—if Beatrice was right about her sister showing her condition. It would have been performed by the queen's personal physician, in a location away from the London gossips. An illegitimate child, killed before it was born or, if Louise was allowed to carry to term, soon after the baby took its first breath. The thought sickened him.

He supposed that such desperate means were not so very rare in a culture where, historically, royals had a habit of murdering each other for the right to wear the crown. Victoria wouldn't have tolerated a wrinkle in the family ancestry, if there was any way she could help it. Although she had produced legitimate male claimants to the throne of England, bastard babies muddied the waters, sometimes laying claim to what they felt was theirs. If not the crown, then a title and royal stipend for life.