Seducing the Princess (8 page)

Beatrice felt the beginnings of happy tears tickle the outer corners of her eyes. How many times had she reread these delicious words? And yet they moved her on every visit.

“He goes on to say this: ‘Now I dare to suggest making of our friendship something more permanent and precious. I could not speak from my heart while you were in Germany with your mother, because of the Grand Duke’s announcement, which had been so stressful for her. I knew that I needed to hold back, to wait until she returned to London and recovered from the shock. To add to her concerns would have been selfish on my part. Aside from that, I feared her response to my proposal might be too hastily made and not in my favor. These weeks while we have been apart have served not only to strengthen my resolve to have you in my life but also, I hope, to soothe your mother so that she might wisely and impartially consider my proposition.’”

Beatrice sneaked a quick peek at Louise, needing to see her reaction. But her sister’s expression remained closed, revealing nothing. Beatrice felt as if she might burst with excitement, but reminded herself that she was inexperienced in the ways of men, and words like
proposal
and
proposition
might have meanings beyond her understanding. It sometimes seemed to her that her mother’s courtiers spoke in riddles when flirting with her ladies. Was that what Henry was doing here? Playing word games?

“Baby,” Helena said, with a nervous laugh. “This can’t possibly be—”

“Hush,” Louise said. “Let her finish.”

Beatrice read on. “Then he says, ‘You see, even now, I have trouble coming to the point, my darling.’”
He’d called her darling!
“‘I would make a pretty speech on bended knee before you, but because you are who you are—daughter to the Queen of England—I know I must first ask your mother’s permission to even hope. Then all must be arranged through her. But I will not appear before her until I have your permission to do so.” Beatrice took a deep breath, not daring to look at either of her sisters now.

“But this is—“ Helena began again.

“Shut up, Lenchen!” Louise snapped. “She obviously has more.”

Beatrice took a shaky breath. She wondered if her heart had ever beat faster than it did now. “Yes, and he goes on to say… ‘I ask these questions of you, dearest girl. First, do you feel as I do? Secondly if so, do you believe the time is right for me to come to London and ask the queen for her blessing?

“‘All depends upon you, my darling Beatrice. Please tell me I have not given my heart in vain. Please tell me I may come and make my intentions…
our
intentions known to your mother. The moment I hear from you I will begin my journey. I wait for your response, my dove.

All my love, Henry Battenberg.’”

Beatrice held her breath, eyes brimming with tears of joy but still afraid to believe. Was this a proposal of marriage, or was it not? She stared at Henry’s sweeping signature. Traced his name with her fingertip, aware of the utter and absolute silence of the room. Her heart pounded in her breast so that she wondered why the salon’s walls didn’t reverberate in response. At last she looked up at her sisters, still seated across from her, and blinked away the wash of tears.

“Well,” Helena said, “that
is
a surprise.”

“But a delightful one!” Louise cried. She shot to her feet, plopped her little niece in Helena’s lap and rushed across the room to pull Beatrice up and into an embrace. “And do you love him? Above all, do you love him, Bea?”

“I think… Yes, yes I really do.” She laughed out loud. “He is such a sweet man. Such a wonderful, warm, safe feeling man. But exciting too! We enjoyed each other’s company. I do think he is absolutely perfect for me. It’s as if no man ever before or will ever again be as right for me as Henry Battenberg.”

“Oh, bosh!” Helena groaned. “Is
that
what you think marriage is about? All romance and cuddles? Well, let me tell you—no man is perfect. The sooner you realize that the better. All you can do is to hope that you get one who doesn’t beat you or the children, who will give you a little of his time now and then but otherwise leave you in peace.”

Louise glared at her. “Do shut up, Lenchen. Why spoil the dream for the girl? If she’s in love, let her enjoy being in love. It’s a difficult enough world without you or Mama crushing whatever little happiness we can find in our lives.”

Beatrice watched Helena pout and bounce the baby on her lap, while her older child tugged at her skirts for attention. But Helena wasn’t done with her.

“The problem is,” she said, “can you trust this man? I’m sure we’d all like to believe he’s sincere.”

“Lenchen, please—”

“I’m just being protective of my little sister, Louise. Don’t berate me for caring about her happiness and warning her. I mean, how well do any of us really know this Henry Battenberg? His brother once made overtures toward Beatrice then backed off. Maybe Henry will do the same. I don’t want to see her heart broken again.”

Beatrice winced. Was that possible? Henry might not honestly and deeply enough care about her to stay interested for more than a few weeks or months?

“Neither do I wish to see her hurt,” Louise said calmly. “But let’s not assume the worst. Liko clearly has thought this through. He has timed his proposal—and it certainly seems to be that—hoping for a positive response. And he’s even asked Beatrice first, rather than putting her in an awkward position in front of Mama.” Louise released her embrace, took Beatrice’s shoulders between her hands and moved her slightly away to better look her in the eyes. “The question is, how do you feel about all of this, Bea? Do you really and truly love him? Is marriage what you want?”

“I know it would mean making many changes in my life,” Beatrice said. “Some, I’m sure I will like very much. Others make me a little nervous, or even afraid.”

“As well you should be,” Helena huffed. “Can you imagine what Mama will say to this Henry if he actually pleads his case for marriage to Baby? Why, she’ll go through the roof. She’ll never allow it. Never in a million years.”

Louise stamped her foot at her sister. “Stop that, Lenchen! If you and I have the right to marry, then Bea ought to be allowed to have her own life, her own husband, her own family. She shouldn’t be deprived simply because she’s the last girl in the family, or because having her here to care for Mama is a convenience to us, her brothers and sisters.”

Helena stared at her, open mouthed. “A convenience? You make it sound as if we’re all so careless of her feelings. As if we’re
using
Beatrice. That’s not it at all.”

“Oh yes it is,” Beatrice snapped before she could stop herself. She cast her eyes down at the lush Persian carpet beneath her feet. “Louise is right. As long as I’m here, providing Mama with constant companionship, serving as her helpmate, she pretty much leaves the rest of you alone. All you have to do is visit now and then, like this, for a few days or weeks out of each year. You can then go on with your own lives.
I
am the one who has stayed and taken up the burden of her happiness.
I
am the one who will always be alone.” She couldn’t stop a sob from working its way up through her throat.

Louise put an arm around her. “No. You don’t have to always be alone. Love will find a way; it always does. Mama will have to give in if you are persistent. If Henry pleads his case well, and you insist upon having him, she will give her blessing. Eventually.”

“So sayeth the Almighty Louise!” Helena burst out bitterly. She was jiggling the baby on her knee so violently the child’s teeth would have been chattering, had she any. “Can you claim your own marriage has been in every way fulfilling?” She rolled her eyes when Louise didn’t immediately answer. “I thought not. We’ve all heard the rumors about your husband and his dirty little escapades with young m—”

“Enough!” Louise shouted, blushing furiously.

“The point is—Bea could go to all sorts of trouble, destroy her relationship with Mama over this man, break both her own and Mama’s hearts…and for what? She has everything here at the palace she could possibly need.”

“Everything,” Beatrice said, “except a family of my own. Except happiness.”

“And sexual fulfillment.” Louise crossed her arms over her chest and raised a single eyebrow meaningfully at Helena. “Let’s not forget that delightful benefit of producing a family.”

Helena made a disgusted face. “Louise, please. You don’t have to use such filthy language.”

“
You
were the one who brought up sexual preferences.”

“Please, sisters, don’t let’s argue,” Beatrice pleaded. “I’m desperate. I need your help. What do I
say
to him? I do love Henry, I’m sure of it. I’m just so very afraid of what Mama will do to the poor man if he comes to claim me.”

Helena looked as if she was going to say something more, but Louise shot her a final glance, sharp as a Scottish dirk. “Tell Henry that you return his love,” Louise said, “if that’s how you feel. Encourage him to come for you. Two are always better than one when it comes to confronting Mama.”

“An
armed
battalion
is more like it,” Helena muttered.

Louise ignored her. “In the meantime, for I’m sure it will take him a week or more to make arrangements for the trip, talk to her. Tell her that you want to marry Henry Battenberg. If big brother Louis was good enough for her beloved granddaughter, Henry is good enough for you.”

“I don’t know,” Beatrice sighed.

Louise put an arm around her. “Of course, she’ll be all bluster and denial at first. That’s just the way she is. She didn’t really want Helena or me to marry, not after losing Vicky and Alice to foreign husbands.”

“It’s true,” Helena added, sounding less combative now that things had been decided. “Something changed in her after Papa died. She suddenly decided she had to protect us from men, or some such crazy notion.”

“You can’t let her stop you from being happy, Bea,” Louise said.

“I don’t know that I can be that brave,” Beatrice whispered. Even now she could feel her stomach souring, and one of her attacks of raspy breathing coming on. “I’m not as strong as you, Louise. If Mama doesn’t want me to marry there will be little I can do to change her mind.”

“We’ll see about that,” Louise said firmly. “When you are ready to speak to her, I will go with you if you like.” She pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and blotted the tears that had pooled beneath Beatrice’s eyes. “Now write to your sweet Henry and tell him what is in your heart.”

Before Gregory left for London, he needed to tackle one final matter back home in Scotland. Her name was Margaret Graham.

He’d visit his voluptuous, red-tressed mistress at her father’s cottage. After enjoying her generous company for a few hours while the men were in the fields, he would break the news to her of his upcoming absence. He’d give her as little real information as possible—he was off to make his fortune, to provide for the future for both of them, he’d say—but reassure her he would soon return for her. After all, what if Wilhelm’s crazy plan didn’t work? Then he’d be back where he’d started, in Aberdeenshire, but without the pleasure of the most beautiful woman in the shire. For he never doubted Meggie would find herself another man if she suspected he’d left forever.

He collected his horse from the stables of the manor house that had been in his family for generations. He rode the three miles down the hillside, into the vale. It was a glorious day, as stunning as any he’d known in the Highlands. Rusty-brown dirt fields basking in the sunlight, crops beginning to sprout, spring flowers a riot of color amongst the yellow-green virgin grass, a sky as blue as a songbird’s melody is sweet. Nothing about it foretold anything but good fortune.

When he arrived at Frank Graham’s cottage on the usual day of his trysts with the farmer’s daughter—Meggie wasn’t waiting outside for him on the stoop. Puzzled by this, he left his horse, mounted the slab-granite steps worn hollow in the middle by a hundred years of footfalls, and pushed on the plank door. It didn’t budge. He knocked.

“Who is it?” Meggie sang out, far too sweetly.

He scowled. “You know damn well who it is, girl.” If anyone else had been at home, he was sure they would have called out to him. Why this sudden coyness? He put his shoulder to the splintery wood and, forcing the rusty latch, shoved his way inside. “What’s going on, Meg?”

She sat at the rough-hewn oak table in the middle of the room, a candle burning on a chipped saucer at its center, sending shimmers of gold through her thick mane. In her cupped hands she held a mug. He smelled whisky.

She raised her drink to him as if in a toast as he stepped through the doorway and into the room. “Come to say goodbye, have ye, love?”

Startled, he hesitated. This presented him with a dilemma.

Until this moment, he had said nothing to Meg or anyone else about his plans. How she’d discovered he was leaving he had no idea. Gregory suddenly felt the need for caution. If the wrong person discovered his true mission, his future—if not his very life—would be in jeopardy. The role Willy had assigned to him—seducer of a royal princess—flirted with treason. Aside from that, the emperor-to-be would be furious with him for leaking their plot. He’d seen the consequences of the prince’s temper. He didn’t at all relish being the object of that Hessian rage.

“What are you talking about, woman? Who’s been filling your head with gossip?”

“None of your concern, now is it? I have me own friends. I have ways of knowin’, Greggy. If you intend to leave me I’ll not be taken by surprise.”

“Who says I’m leavin’ you?” He intentionally gentled his voice and reached to pull her up out of her seat, into his arms.

She struggled away and stood behind the ladder back of the chair, eyes flashing at him. “I want the truth, you little turd,” she snarled. “I heard from one of the maids at the big house—you’ve booked one-way train passage to London. She saw the ticket. Least you can do is be honest with me. We were to marry, or so you said. After your da passed. You said he would never allow it but you promised we’d marry when the old man was gone. So now, what do you say about that?”

He tried to move around the table toward her, but every quarter turn of the circle he made, she matched, keeping furniture between them.

“And I
will
marry you, lass. ‘course I will. Just a trip to London, that’s all it is. Nothing permanent.”

She squinted at him, hands propped on her hips. “And the return ticket?”

“Don’t know how long my business there will take, now do I? How can I buy the ticket home until I know when it’s for?”

“Business,” she said, casting him a witchy eye, albeit a pretty one.

“Aye. All business, nothing more. Legal matters. I’m doing this for us, Meggie. If everything works out I’ll have my fortune made in no time. Then we will marry.” It came as a blessed relief to him that her reaction suggested she knew nothing of his ambition to gain the virgin princess’s bed.

Now he needed to keep her in the dark about his real purpose. And, if he succeeded in his mission and won both Beatrice’s heart and the old queen’s trust, what then? Meg would be furious if he went off and married another woman, no matter who she was. She’d make trouble for him. He’d probably have to pay her off to keep her from spreading details of their past.

The good news was—he was pretty sure she could be bought. Her family had always lived the hard-scrabble life of tenant farmers. They’d none of them be above accepting a bribe when all they had to do was keep silent. And he’d happily pay, out of his wife’s royal coffers, to keep Meggie’s pretty lips sealed.

“Darlin’, be reasonable. What sort of fortune can I make for us here?” He swept a hand around him as if to indicate all of Scotland.

She winced and cast her eyes down at the dusty floorboards, looking less sure of herself. “I don’t know, Greg. You wouldn’t be lyin’ to me, would you? You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“‘course not, my darlin’ girl. How long we been together? Two years? Three?”

“Since before you went off to school in Germany, I’ll remind you.” She scowled at him.

He laughed. “I was just teasing you. Come on now. I’m here to tell you about my journey. And I’ll be back sooner than you think. Now, what’s the use of a trip to London if I can’t bring my girl back a present?”

Her eyes brightened at that. “A bit of Honiton lace would be wonderful. Enough to make an elegant collar for church.”

“Easy enough done,” he said cheerfully. “I thought you were going to ask me for jewelry. But if it’s lace you want—”

“No. Oh, no!” she squealed. “A ring? Oh Greg, a pretty love ring. I saw one once, in a shop window in Edinburgh. Three circlets—one of white gold, one of yellow gold, and one of rose gold—intertwined like woven flower stems. The shop woman said they was all the rage in London. You’d do that for me?” Her green eyes sparkled. She danced around the table’s edge and flung herself into his arms. “It would make a fine engagement ring.”

He regretted having put ideas in her head. “Now, how would that look? You waltzing around the village with a gold ring on your finger. And all the county asking, ‘Who’s the lucky man? When’s the wedding day?’ We can’t have that, now can we? Not while my father’s still breathing.”

She sighed and turned away from him, flinging her long red curls over her shoulder. They shimmered in the candlelight and, as always, he felt compelled to reach out and knot his fingers through their enchanting tangles. He brought his face down into their soft nest and breathed in the scent of her—all woman, all his for as long as he wanted her. In her impoverished circumstance, she’d find no better than the third son of a minor noble. But if he wasn’t here to satisfy her lust…

He brushed his hands up her bare arms. “Oh, Meggie, my beauty, my love. I’ll be the happiest man on earth the day I’m free to marry you.” His hands wandered down from her shoulders, along the swell of her breasts to her waist, smoothing over her hips, gathering her skirt in greedy handfuls. He slipped his fingers beneath the layers of petticoats and felt her fine, strong thighs.

She looped her arms around his neck and threw back her head in invitation. “Oh, you,” she cooed, exposing her throat to his kisses. “I never can say no to you, Greggy.”

“I know,” he said.