The bees echoed loudly in my ears. The air, thick from the recent rains and stiflingly sweet from the close circle of roses, weighed heavily in my lungs. Then Willow, barely older than Victoria, slid from the bench and sank to the grass in a deep curtsy.
“Your Highness,” she whispered. Tears beaded the tips of her thick lashes.
The twins, Ivy and Holly, followed, their heads bowed to the hot summer sun and the alarmed gaze of the princess. Perhaps thinking it a game, Dash pranced around them, nudging them with his moist nose.
Victoria’s gaze shifted and locked with mine, and the raw emotion in its dark depths prompted me to jump up and throw my arms around her. Drawing her deeper into the concealing curve of the rose hedges so that the adults on the terrace could no longer see us, I held the princess tight as she sobbed against my bosom.
In an instant Holly, Ivy, and Willow formed a tight ring around us, their arms interlocking and their heads bent over Victoria’s. Their tears—our tears—mingled with hers.
“I am frightened,” she whispered. “So frightened of the future. I feel so alone.”
“You need not be afraid, dearest.” Pressing kisses to her hair, I murmured reassurances. The spaniel sat looking up at us, his head cocked in an aspect of sympathy. My heart nearly broke as I considered that, aside from my sisters and me, Dash was the princess’s truest friend in all the world.
“One day, many years from now, you shall make a splendid queen,” I told her. “And you will always have us. We shall always be your friends, your servants if ever you need us.”
For all my attempts to comfort her, I wondered: how long before her mother and the royal court deemed my sisters and I, common-born and lacking in fortune, unfit to keep company with the future Queen of England? Were it not for the military ties among our father, our uncle, and the Duke of Kent, we should never have crossed paths.
Yet we had loved her—adored her—from the moment she first tottered into the front hall of Thorn Grove some nine years before. Perhaps it was our mutual lack of a father that forged the initial bonds among us; who better than the Sutherland sisters to understand the sad, wistful yearnings of a fatherless child?
Some minutes passed before I felt Victoria pulling straighter, taller. She stepped back from our embraces. With a brave sniffle, she raised her chin. “We shall remain friends, shan’t we? I do so wish us to.”
“Of course we shall.” The assertion came from Willow, who, a year older, stood head and shoulders above Victoria. Dearest Willow, young enough to retain her optimism, too young to realize the truth.
I gazed at Holly and Ivy, who at fifteen could not be more different despite their being twins. Holly, with her auburn hair, freckles, and violet-blue eyes, nodded vigorously in agreement with Willow’s sentiment. Ivy, her expression as dark as her coloring, managed a shaky smile even as she flashed me a look of despondency.
The certainty that time and circumstance would inevitably remove Victoria from our intimate circle filled me with sadness. But, as my sisters did, I conjured a smile for my little friend, took her hand in mine, and knelt before her to look her in the face.
“You will always have us,” I repeated. “Ivy, Holly, Willow, and I will always be your friends. Your secret friends, if need be. You must always remember that. When you are queen, if there is ever anything you need, any way that we may serve you, you have only to call on us.”
“My secret friends,” the princess repeated, tilting her head to savor the words. She glanced down at Dash, still sitting quietly as if grasping the solemnity of the occasion. Suddenly the fear and apprehension drained from Victoria’s features. Squeezing my hand, she gave a resolute nod. “My secret servants . . .”
Chapter 1
London, July 1837
B
eneath what was, for London, a dazzling noonday sun, Aidan Phillips, ninth Earl of Barensforth, suddenly found himself short one illegitimate, slightly inebriated prince, and he was damned unhappy about it.
Maneuvering his gelding through Knightsbridge Street’s close-packed crowds, he avoided colliding with the other riders, carriages, and carts, and the constant zigzag of hurrying pedestrians. The sidewalks bore an even heftier burden, jammed tight as if with several days’ worth of shoppers all at once.
Despite the inconvenience, a festive air hung over the multitude, as cheerful as the red, white, and blue striped bunting draped along the building fronts. Costermongers squeezed through, hawking the delicacies brimming from their handbarrows, their shouts of “Pasties,” “Gingerbread cakes,” “Oranges,” “Pickles” . . . rising above the general din. Young children sat breathlessly atop their father’s shoulders. Older boys climbed halfway up lampposts and clung there.
“Sir! Excuse me, sir!” A uniformed policeman came briskly alongside Aidan’s horse and placed a hand on the bridle. “You’ll have to move off onto a side street, sir. We’re closing off Knightsbridge now. The queen will be coming through shortly.”
Aidan replied with a quick salute. The officer moved away to repeat the order to others clogging the way.
Squinting against the glare, Aidan peered into the westward distance. The royal procession would soon pass by on its way to the recently renovated Buckingham Palace, conveying England’s brand-new queen to her brand-new home. Aidan saw no sign yet of the cavalcade, and for that bit of good luck he breathed a sigh of thanks.
An oath of frustration followed. He was supposed to have kept a sharp eye on the queen’s cousin George Fitzclarence, eldest son of the late King William and as unhappy a royal as Aidan had ever encountered. Not that old Fitz was royal in the strictest sense, mind you, for he’d had the ill fortune of being born on the wrong side of the imperial sheets.
Hence the problem, and Aidan’s present dilemma. Fitz wanted to be king. Badly. And he could not be convinced of the futility of that wish. Not even being Earl of Munster, a title conferred upon him by his father, proved sufficient balm to ease his blistering disappointment.
To make matters worse, despite his recent appointment as aide-de-camp to the queen, George Fitzclarence had not been invited to join today’s procession. As Fitz had vociferously complained just last night, his new post amounted to little more than a patronizing pat on the head.
Since the old king’s death two months ago, Fitz had engaged in a downward spiral of drunkenness and dangerous ideas, ones he spewed eagerly to whoever lent a sympathetic ear. Several nights before at a soiree at the home of the French-born Comtesse de Regny, Fitz had openly advocated the radical strategy of doing away with the monarchy altogether.
Blasted hell.
Aidan had been sorely tempted to toss Fitz over the comtesse’s balcony railing rather than allow him to continue his treasonous tirade. As it was, Aidan had stuffed a pickled whelk into the inebriate’s mouth to shut him up and soon after bustled him from the party.
Regardless, word had gotten back to the Home Office, which now expected Aidan to continue playing nursemaid to the Earl of Munster until further notice.
Aidan’s eyes burned from lack of sleep. They had spent the previous night gambling at Crockfords, then gone across the way to Whites, where Fitz had sipped enough sherry to sink him into a contented and, Aidan hoped, Victoria-free doze. Unfortunately, quite without warning, about an hour ago the old boy had pushed out of his wing chair, declared a change of scenery just the thing, and called for his horse.
Aidan flinched as a short blast on a whistle heralded the return of the police constable. A scowl replaced deference as he shouted, “Thought I warned you to get a move on.”
Skirting a family of six that was attempting to wedge itself into a space big enough for three, Aidan offered the official a compliant nod and turned his horse south. William Street led into Lowndes Square and eventually over to Sloane, where the Earl of Munster might have slipped into any number of drinking establishments.
The blue-coated policemen now arranged themselves as human barriers at intervals along Knightsbridge to hold back the crowd. The distant blare of trumpets announced the queen’s imminent approach. Shading his eyes with his hand, Aidan made out the distant dust clouds of the riders preceding the royal coach.
A cry of sheer panic ripped through the clamor, startling his gelding. A few soothing words calmed the horse, but the desperate shouts continued. Aidan scanned the crowd.
Several doors down from the corner of William Street, two policemen were attempting to herd a mob of spectators—too many for so small an area—farther back off the street. With the shop fronts directly behind them, they had nowhere to go. An out-of-control hysteria threatened to take hold.
The feminine cries took on a shriller urgency. In the middle of the surging multitude, Aidan caught flashes of lustrous gold hair that had half fallen from its pins; a gust of wind lifted the disheveled strands away from her beautiful but alarm-pinched features. The woman held a child high in her arms.
Tears of terror streaked the little girl’s face as her rescuer continued shouting for someone to take the child. A pair of arms clad in tweed reached over heads and grabbed her, then passed her through the crowd. Finally she reached a shawl-wrapped figure that must have been her mother, for the woman clasped the child close and shed tears of relief.
But the golden- haired beauty had been shoved farther into the press of bodies until she stood trapped against the window of a shop whose sign read WINSTON’S HABERDASHERY. Her chin high, her arms stretched above her head, she attempted in vain to squeeze her way out. From all sides, the mob pinned her in place.
At the edge of the street, a redhead struggled without success to push her way through the crowd. She jumped to see over heads, shouting something Aidan could not make out. Seeming to believe she wished only to usurp their vantage points, the spectators shoved her impatiently away.
In defiance of the officer waving him off, Aidan guided his gelding to the side of the road. He intended to swing down from the saddle and shoulder his way through, but at the last second he changed his mind.
“Coming through,” he shouted in his most authoritative voice. “Make way!”
Despite his impatience he eased his powerful gray forward one cautious step at a time. Behind him, the policemen blew their whistles and ordered him to cease and desist, while those lurching out of his way spat blasphemies gritty enough to peel the paint from the storefronts.
Though the woman’s cries continued to draw him on, he lost sight of his quarry as she slid down the building front and disappeared behind the press of bodies. Around her the people pushed and shoved. The police whistles shrieked furiously—and uselessly. Aidan urged Ferdinand onward.
Her throat raw from pleading, Laurel gasped for air. No one listened. No one heard her. She felt as though she were drowning—drowning in people. With dizzying closeness, arms and legs, silks, cottons, and dark serge reeled in her vision. Behind her, the window made ominous creaking sounds.
A shove took her off her feet. Someone trod on her hems. She heard tearing and felt herself going down, down to where no one would see her. Where she would be kicked, trampled. Panic rose in a stranglehold. . . .
Suddenly, astoundingly, the crowd parted, and cool air rushed into the spaces where bodies had been. A giant figure, towering and gray, appeared between skirts and trouser legs. In her confusion she could not make out what it could be; then, to her amazement, the figure formed itself into the hooves, fetlocks, flanks, and, finally, powerful neck and head of a horse. A hand—broad, long-fingered, sinewy—reached toward her.
Fingers of steady, heartening strength closed around her wrist and drew her effortlessly to her feet. Briefly she glimpsed a polished Hessian boot, riding breeches stretched tight over a muscled thigh, and the hair-sprinkled width of that powerful hand—powerful enough to save her life. Then she stepped into the offered stirrup and was swung up onto the horse’s back.
Her arms went around a tight, trim waist; her cheek pressed against a shoulder as unyielding as steel. She shut her eyes and hung on tight, or as tight as her trembling limbs permitted.
Though she would likely die of embarrassment when she considered it later, she could not prevent herself from uttering a cry of mixed terror, relief, and sheer, unbridled gratitude, an outburst absorbed into the collar of a coat that fit the gentleman sitting in front of her like an elegant second skin. If he noticed, which he assuredly must have, he gave no indication, not the slightest wince, though Laurel voiced her emotions exceedingly close to his ear.
Without lifting her face, she braved a peek at her surroundings. From high atop the horse, the crowd appeared surprisingly innocuous, an undulating vista of dark hats and bright bonnets.
A trumpet sounded and a cheer went up. Twisting, she spotted the queen’s open coach proceeding up the road toward them. The diminutive figure inside, draped in velvet and crowned with a coronet of flashing gold, waved a white-gloved hand at her subjects.
Pride, delight, and bitter disappointment rose in Laurel. Oh, she had hoped to stand out in front, give a call that might attract Victoria’s attention and prompt some personal response that only Laurel and her sisters, and the queen herself, would understand.
My secret friends . . . my secret servants . . .
Earlier, Laurel and her sisters had crossed to the north side of Knightsbridge Street with the intention of walking to the open verge outside Hyde Park, where they might watch from the comfort of a thinner and less turbulent crowd. Partway there, Laurel had realized that none of them had remembered to bring the flowers they intended to toss to the queen’s passing coach.
When she had gone back for them, she had seen little Lucy Brock yanked by the surging crowd away from her mother. The last thing Laurel had witnessed before being swallowed into the horde was Lucy being swung back into Mrs. Brock’s arms.