Shall We Dance? (30 page)

Amelia lifted a gloved hand to her mouth, remembering the verse, and then the carriage halted and it was time for the circus to begin.

“Amelia? Child? I don't feel well,” the queen said, putting out a hand to her. “What if Brougham is wrong? What if they know? Could they know? They
can't
know.”

“
Shh,
ma'am. There is nothing for them to know.”

The queen lifted her chin. “Yes, you are of course correct. There is nothing for them to know. Some things are mine, Amelia. England has taken enough from me, I will not allow more.”

 

C
LIVE FOLLOWED AFTER
Nestor as the butler made his evening rounds.

“I told you, I'm not going to take the chest, even if I knew where it is, and I don't,” Nestor said, rounding on Clive as, working together, they checked the locks on the windows.

“Dovey says yer need more chin before she can trust yer. I'm not such a looby, but I still don't trust yer. Yer're too keen on provin' yerself right.”

“I
am
right,” Nestor protested hotly. “Even His
Lordship thinks I might be right. A better day is dawning, Rambert, a better day for all of England. You'll see. The king is hated. Loathed, Rambert. When we can tell everyone that Princess Amelia is the true heir, the queen will lose her last detractor, and it will be her churlish husband who is banished to a…to a
place
like this.”

“Yer wants ter shut yer flappin' mouth?” Clive asked, grabbing Nestor by the elbow and pushing him into a window alcove. “Not the sort of thing the whole world and his wife need ta know, right?”

Nestor pulled at the lapels of his satin coat, adjusted the wig on his head. “There's no need to become physical, Rambert. It's nearly midnight and the queen and Princess Amelia have been safely closeted together for hours. Poor dears, having to spend the day listening to that idiot Sir Robert Gifford—tedious man, but often brilliant—prosing on about the many witnesses he will call to bring testimony against the queen. The princess must be having some difficulty settling Her Majesty.”

“Miss Fredericks said Her Majesty was top o' the trees today,” Clive said, with some pride, because he, who had previously been as political as a cobblestone, had come to feel sorry for the queen.

“She can only sit and listen, or take herself off to the retiring room they were forced to grant her. She can't lift a finger to defend herself. It's so unfair!”

“True,” Clive said, backing out of the alcove. “And it'd be a sorry thing if yer were the only one she had watchin' her back. But yer ain't. Come on now,
Dovey's got tea and scones waitin' on me. Ah!” He inclined his head to Esther Pidgeon. “Yer needin' somethin', missus?”

Esther only shook her head and continued on down the hallway.

Clive waited until Mrs. Pidgeon had reached the servant stairs before he shot out his arm, backhanding Nestor in the belly. “Heard yer, she did, yer whackin' great fool. Princess Amelia, is it? I oughta lop off yer tongue.”

Nestor rubbed at his stomach. “So what if she did? His Lordship's sure she's here on orders from Sir Willard, and he's with us now, correct?'

“He don't know that fer sure. We none o'us knows that fer sure. Slippery piece of work, Sir Willie. Now what do we do? We have ta tell His Lordship, yer know.”

Nestor pulled at his collar, easing it away as he swallowed with some difficulty. “Must we? I mean, couldn't we just watch her? After all, there's two of us, and only one of her.”

Clive considered this. “Poor man has enough on his plate, don't he? What with him bein' all arsy-varsy over Miss Fredericks, and the rest.”

“Exactly! Poor man has to know she's lost to him once it's out she's the princess,” Nestor said, motioning for Clive to precede him down the hallway, toward the servant stairs. “I should think we'd be doing him a very great favor, not telling him.”

“All sorts of new servants cloggin' up the place,” Clive said, as if to help convince himself. “Dozens and dozens of them. No knowin' who's who anymore, is
there? And we can't be sure she heard us. And she's only a female. Can't go worryin' about females.”

Nestor pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his suddenly damp brow. “You're a very smart man, Clive Rambert.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Clive said. But he'd really like to talk to Dovey about this, except that Dovey relied on Mrs. Pidgeon more than a little bit. “So we watch the bird, the two o'us, and we don't tell nobody. Agreed?”

Nestor replaced the handkerchief. “Agreed. We've checked everything, Rambert—Clive. I wouldn't mind one of those scones, you know. Nobody will be breaking in here tonight.”

 

P
ERRY QUIETLY CLOSED
and locked the window in Amelia's dressing room and took a moment to collect himself. Only then did he enter the bed chamber, to find that a low fire burned in the grate and a few candles were lit but Amelia was not in residence.

Very well, he'd wait. Not happily, but he would wait.

He had spent a long night and an even longer day dealing with Jarrett Rolin, his passage through the countryside made less noticeable or noteworthy, yet much more time consuming, as he was slowed considerably by the demonstrations that seemed to be going on in every small hamlet and byway. Parades, speeches, bonfires, all in support of the queen.

It was amazing, really. None of these loyal subjects had ever even seen the queen, and knew little or noth
ing about her—except that she wasn't the king. And that seemed to be all they needed to know.

Perry had stopped at his uncle's upon his return to London, to learn that the archivist Sir Willard had contacted was indeed alive, and a full accounting of the king's activities in the early months of 1801 would be sent shortly.

“How shortly?” Perry had asked.

“Such haste, Nevvie,” Sir Willard had responded. “Don't you want to hear what happened today? It was quite the show. I do believe there is nothing half so humorous as government attempting to be solemn, most especially as it concerns the two-edged sword of infidelity. As if a man-jack of them has ever kept to their marital vows. Why, while we waited for the queen to arrive, I amused myself touting up the bastards produced by just the first three rows of my peers. I quit when I got to twenty. And I don't think I can count high enough to include all their various mistresses. And yet there we were, asked to condemn someone for being just like us. Of course, at the bottom of it, she is female. Lot of cheek, a female thinking she can act like a man.”

“They've already gotten into the particulars? I thought there'd be a lot of posing and puffing, at least for the first few days.”

“Oh, they puffed and posed. Gifford spoke first, dropping hints like a proudly strutting youth who'd just bedded his first woman and wanted the entire world to know. I have to say the queen's solicitor general—Thomas Denman, you know him?—was rather eloquent
in the few words he was allowed before we adjourned for the day. The queen was there, you know. My God, she's aged badly, nearly as badly as the king himself. The pair of them look as if they've been ridden hard, then put away wet. I spent an hour in front of the mirror this evening, looking for evidence of dissolution in my own face.”

“Fascinating as all this is, Uncle, and I'm convinced you think it is, could you answer my question? The information?”

“A few days, a few days. You do know that you could very possibly have all your questions answered if you'd only unbend your scruples far enough to pry open one small wooden chest. But enough of that. Are you in need of funds, Nevvie? I don't think I've ever seen you looking quite so shabby and down at the heel. And that greatcoat is atrocious. What are those stains?”

Perry hadn't answered, but had left his uncle to return to Portman Square, where he allowed his valet to cluck over him for a bit before heading to Hammersmith.

And now here he was, and he kept hearing his uncle's words:
All your questions answered if you'd only…

No. He couldn't do it.

He walked around the large, canopied bed, to stare at the bedside table. The book was gone. Good.

But the locked cabinet that made up the base of the table was still there.

His palms itched. His conscience burned.

And his need to know won out.

The cabinet hung open in seconds, and he was hold
ing the intricately carved wooden chest closer to the candles, visually examining the lock.

With a glance toward the closed door to the hallway, he did the unthinkable, the unpardonable.

He opened the chest.

Bits of dried flowers. A thin curl of white ribbon, like that found on a christening gown. Fingernail clippings, obviously those of a small child, wrapped in folded brown paper. A gold locket that, when opened, revealed a miniature that was undoubtedly the reportedly heavily mustachioed Pergami. Another folded brown paper, the words written on it labeling its contents as soil from the Holy Land. A brooch fashioned of two distinct shades of braided human hair.

And more. Womanly things, personal memories, emotional trinkets.

Perry felt dirty, personally dirty, to have invaded the queen's privacy.

It was only when he saw the wax-sealed, folded sheets of vellum at the very bottom of the shallow chest that his fingers began to tremble. There was writing on the top folded sheet: “For Amelia.”

He wanted to rip open the seal. Every instinct he had told him the answers, all the answers, would be revealed to him if he just read what the queen had written.

And then he realized something. He no longer wanted those answers.

He closed the chest and replaced it in the cabinet, calling himself every kind of fool…but then what is a man in love if not a fool?

 

“S
TUPID FOOLS
!”

“Yes, ma'am,” Amelia said, as if by rote, for the queen had been alternately weeping and crowing over the day's events for the past three uncomfortable hours. At the moment she was crowing again, and deep in her cups, for she had been drinking all the night long as she sat against the plumped-up pillows of her bed.

It had taken a full hour for Amelia to convince the queen to allow her impressive covey of newly acquired maids to undress her and then get her into that bed.

“They whisper of a green bag of evidence? How long has my husband been spying on me, I ask you, to have collected so much of what he calls evidence of my guilt? Ha! Evidence of his own perfidy, that's what it is. Amelia, more wine!”

Amelia sighed, considered suggesting that the queen try to sleep now, preserve her energies for the first day of testimony against her tomorrow, but then did the woman's bidding, because otherwise she would risk an explosion that she was too weary to face. Only once, in her concern for Her Majesty, had Amelia ever watered the woman's wine, and that was not a trick she'd try again.

The queen took the wineglass, then reached out with her other hand, gripping Amelia's wrist with the strength of a vise. “Don't worry, they'll never know. When I'm gone they'll still not know. I've waited too long in any case.”

“Ma'am?” Amelia said, doing her best not to wince, because the queen's grip did not loosen, but intensified.
“If I might suggest that you allow me to summon your maids once more and—”

Amelia lost her footing as the queen pulled at her, and she half fell onto the bed before she could right herself and sit down properly.

Her Majesty leaned close, her wine-sour breath mere inches from Amelia's face. “You must be made to understand. I wanted to hurt him. I had every right to hurt him.
All
of them. To take, take, take, and then dare to come to me to demand more? He
knows,
Amelia. He has to have known, all these years. It has driven him to destroy me, what he knows and cannot prove.”

Her Majesty pulled Amelia into a fierce embrace. “Too late. I've left it too late, my revenge turning on me when my dearest Charlotte died. He has to destroy me now, because he knows we both left it too late.”

“Ma'am, please calm yourself,” Amelia said, gently disengaging herself, and genuinely worried now, because the queen looked positively ill.

“No! You
protect
yourself, Amelia.” The queen seemed to lose all her strength, and lay back against the pillows, closing her eyes. “Sweet child, I don't die fast enough. Protect yourself…”

 

P
ERRY SAT
in one of the wing chairs, staring at the cabinet door. If he knew the truth, would that truth protect Amelia or damn her? And what of the queen?

Bernard Nestor felt he'd found the truth, even if he couldn't prove it. Uncle Willard was hot on the hunt. How many others were there?

And when had he become such a man of scruples that he refused to satisfy his own curiosity?

“I can't protect her, no matter if she's royal, bastard or what the world believes her to be,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

How he wanted her to be no more than Amelia Fredericks, orphaned infant taken into the queen's household, or even the bastard child of a misbehaving queen. Those were not insurmountable problems to a man of his social standing. He could protect her. As his countess no one would dare point at her, use her.

But if Prinney had bedded his wife again, on orders from the king, and Amelia had been the result? If Caroline, having already been robbed of her daughter Charlotte, had been careful to confuse Amelia's parentage in order to keep that daughter safe and with her and out of the clutches of the monarchy?