Most Eagerly Yours (45 page)

Ivy poured tea, added cream and the heaping teaspoons of sugar Queen Victoria favored, and passed the cup and saucer into her royal guest’s hands. “Drink this, dear. It will help calm you.”

Victoria obeyed with a small sip, then set the cup on her lap and shook her head. “You don’t understand. I cannot be calm until the stone is recovered and back safe with me. Oh, I’ll be a laughing stock, and Albert might never wish to speak to me again. . . .”

Wondering who this Albert was, Ivy held up a hand. “Please slow down and tell me why this stone is so special. You say it is not a priceless gem as reported in the newspapers?”

“Indeed it is not—at least not in the usual sense. But I dared not let the real truth be known. You see”—Victoria’s bosom rose on a sigh—“it is infinitely more precious than a jewel. It was a gift from . . .”

“Yes?” Ivy gave Victoria’s shoulder a reassuring pat. “You may speak freely. My sisters and I would die before we betrayed your confidence.”

A fleeting smile of gratitude softened Victoria expression. “The gift came from Albert, my Saxe-Coburg cousin. He is a dabbler in the sciences, you see, and this stone . . . it is believed to have fallen from the sky. . . . A meteorite. And, oh, Ivy, it is extraordinary, indeed.”

“How so?”

“There is a certain energy about it.” The queen’s voice dropped as if to prevent her words from being overheard. “A kind of warm field that at once pushes some objects away from it and draws others to it.”

“It is magnetic,” Ivy ventured.

“Oh, more than that. It is
electro
magnetic, and Albert believes it might even be a key to providing scientists with the means of generating . . . someday . . . useful and efficient electricity.”

A ripple of excitement traveled Ivy’s length. “To replace fire and steam in the powering of our industries, yes?”

“I suppose. . . . To be honest, I’m not quite certain what all this hocus-pocus will be used for.” Victoria raised her cup for another sip.

Then her features crumpled in dismay. “What does it matter? Albert entrusted this stone to me as a symbol of our commitment to each other.” In a whisper she said, “Oh, Ivy, he has asked me to
marry
him.”

In a burst of elation, Ivy threw her arms around her younger friend, careful not to upset her tea. “That is wonderful news. My dearest, I am so happy for you. When will the joyous occasion take place?”

She didn’t ask whether she would be invited, for she knew the answer to that. The Sutherland sisters had stopped being suitable companions for the then-Princess Victoria some seven years before, when she had become heir apparent to the throne. Soon after, they had lost touch with her, only to reestablish ties—secret ones—last spring when Victoria had appealed to them for help in a matter requiring the utmost discretion.

“I don’t yet know,” Victoria replied. “These things must be handled through the proper channels. But once we
are
married and Albert is here in England, he intends to put the stone in the hands of the right man, a scientist of singular brilliance. But now I have lost it and . . . Oh, Ivy! Albert will be so angry with me! And so will my dear Lord Melbourne.”

“Your prime minister?”

“Indeed, yes.” Placing her cup and saucer on the sofa table, Victoria leaped up from the settee and began pacing the small area of carpet in front of the fireplace. Ivy noted that her petite figure had grown plumper in the months since her coronation, her youthful features more careworn. Or was the latter due to her present predicament?

“I don’t understand why Lord Melbourne should care one way or another about such a private matter,” Ivy said.

Victoria came to an abrupt halt and faced her. “That is exactly the point.”

When Ivy stared back blankly, the queen continued impatiently. “My dealings with Albert should never have
been
a private matter. I am a monarch, and for me there can be no affairs of the heart, not in the truest sense. Such matters are to be conducted through proper diplomatic procedures, but Ivy, Albert and I have been skirting those procedures on the sly. Nothing has been officially approved. In fact, I have led most of my courtiers to believe that I don’t particularly care for Albert. Should anyone find out that I have already pledged my hand . . . why, think of the scandal!”

Ivy could indeed imagine the tittle-tattle certain to fill England’s drawing rooms should it become known that the queen had behaved in a manner deemed inappropriate. “But it isn’t fair. Your uncles—”

“Were men. It is one thing for a king to carry on with his mistresses, but let a queen set her big toe beyond the dictates of proper decorum, and
oh
!” She made a noise and tossed her hands in the air to simulate an explosion. “Royal or no, I am foremost a woman in the eyes of my subjects, and an impropriety like this . . .”

“I understand.” Ivy pushed to her feet and went to stand before her queen. “What can I do?”

“Find the stone, Ivy. It was taken by one of my ladies-in-waiting, Lady Gwendolyn de Burgh.”

“Are you certain?”

“This morning the stone was gone, and so was Lady Gwendolyn—quite without my permission. Why, she’d been asking so many questions, I should have realized her interest in the stone was more than cursory. But I trusted her as I trust all my ladies, or most of them. Never could I have imagined such treachery from within my own private chambers.”

Ivy’s heart fluttered. If only Laurel and Aidan were home. If anyone could recover the queen’s stolen property, they could. Last spring, Victoria had sent Laurel to Bath disguised as a widow in order to spy on George Fitzclarence, a royal cousin whom Victoria had suspected of treason. Together, Laurel and Aidan had followed a dizzying maze of clues to solve a murder, stop a financial fraud, and put a very nasty individual behind bars where he belonged.

But Laurel and Aidan were away in France on some mysterious business neither seemed inclined to discuss.

“If only Laurel were due back soon. . . .”

“No, Ivy, it is you I need.”

“But I’m not the adventurous one. Everything I know I’ve learned in books.”

“Precisely. I need someone bookish, someone who would fit in with scholars and men of science. I am all but certain Lady Gwendolyn has headed to her home outside of Cambridge. Her brother disowned her some months back, and I believe she intends on giving him the stone as a peace offering. You see, he’s something of an amateur scientist—if a rather mad one—and the stone would be of particular importance to him.”

At mention of Cambridge, home of one of Europe’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, all of Ivy’s senses came alive with interest. What she wouldn’t give to be allowed to attend lectures in those celebrated halls. The word
scientist
, too, had captured her attention. But she hadn’t at all liked Victoria’s one quick reference to the man’s disposition.

“Mad?”

After a brief hesitation, Victoria admitted, “Some call him the Mad Marquess of Harrow, but I’m sure it’s merely collegiate fraternity nonsense. He maintains close ties with the university. That is where you will find him, Ivy, and perhaps the stone as well.”

“I see,” Ivy said when, in fact, she did not. “Then I am to appeal to him for the return of the stone.”

“Goodness, no!” Alarm pinched Victoria’s features. “He may not be mad, but neither is he known for being a reasonable man. He disowned his sister, didn’t he?”

“Then . . . ?”

“You must earn his trust. It so happens he is presently searching for an assistant for his experiments. If you could manage to win the position, you would gain access to his private laboratory, where you could then steal back what is rightfully mine.”

The outrageous proposal sent a chuckle bubbling in Ivy’s throat, one quickly coughed away when Her Majesty’s expression failed to convey even the faintest trace of humor.

This, apparently, was no jest, but a true call to Her Majesty’s service, one that left Ivy more than a little perplexed. “How on earth shall I, a woman, track down a man in an academic setting? I wouldn’t gain admittance through the front gates, much less the lecture halls.”

Victoria smacked her lips together. “I have a plan for that, though admittedly a shocking one. More shocking, even, than when I asked Laurel to pose as a widow last spring and work her charms on my inebriate, adulterous cousin.”

More shocking than
that
? Ivy dreaded to ask, but ask she did. And the answer she received stunned her more than anything she had ever heard in all her twenty-two years on this earth.