“You try climbing a wall in all of these garments,” she retorted.
He chuckled.
She grinned.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head, as if he could not quite believe his own thoughts. “You are incomparable. No one told me you would be this beautiful.”
Suddenly, Charlotte did not know what to do with her hands. Or her legs. Her body felt strange, as if the air she breathed was some fizzy foreign substance, twinkling on the wind.
“You may be too beautiful to marry me,” George continued. “People will talk.” He tipped his head, quirking a devilish smile. “Given that I am a troll.”
Charlotte wanted to die. “Your Majesty—”
“George.”
“George,” she forced herself to repeat. It was not easy. He was a king. No one called kings by their Christian names.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“What?”
“You do not know me. That is the problem, is it not? What do you want to know about me?”
“That is quite . . . I do not . . .”
He smiled expectantly, never taking his eyes from her face.
“Everything,” she said.
He nodded slowly. “All right. Everything, eh? Well. I was born prematurely, and everyone thought I was going to die. But I did not. I am a fair fencer. An even better shot. My favorite food is mutton. I will not eat fish.” He looked up sharply. “Do you like fish?”
“I—”
“No matter,” he said, clearly uninterested in her answer. “We shall not eat it. I like books and art and good conversation. But most of all, I like science.”
“Science?”
“Chemistry, physics, botany. And especially astronomy. The stars and the heavens. I am quite the farmer, probably would be a farmer if I were not already occupied.”
Charlotte blinked, trying to keep up with him.
He pointed to his ribcage. “I have a scar here from falling off my horse. And one here”—he motioned to his hand, to the base of his thumb—“from just being incredibly clumsy with a paring knife. And I am very nervous about marrying a girl I am only just meeting minutes before our wedding, but I cannot show it and climb over a wall because I am the King of Great Britain and Ireland and it would cause a scandal. But I promise you, I am neither a troll nor a beast.” He paused, and Charlotte finally saw the hint of nerves in his warm, dark eyes.
He looked at her. Really looked at her. And he said, “I am just George.”
Charlotte felt her face change. She was smiling. She couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled so widely. She liked him. She liked him. It seemed a miracle, but she liked this man she had been commanded to marry. He talked a bit quickly when he got going, but he was . . . interesting. And funny.
And really quite handsome.
“George,” she said, testing his name out on her tongue. “I—”
“Liebchen!”
She whirled around. Adolphus was hurrying toward her.
“We have been looking everywhere for you!” her brother said. “What are you—” He gasped. “Your Majesty.”
Adolphus bowed. Deeply. Humbly.
“Ah,” George said, in quite the friendliest manner imaginable. “You are the man responsible for my possible future happiness.”
“Ja,” Adolphus said, looking highly ill at ease. “My apologies. Yes. No. I’m—”
“Well, you have arrived at a most opportune moment,” George said. “Charlotte was just deciding whether or not she wanted to marry me.”
An expression of great alarm came over Adolphus’s face. “Charlotte is overjoyed to become your wife.”
“No,” George said sharply. “She is still deciding.” He flicked his head toward the garden wall. “She might go over the wall instead.”
Adolphus’s mouth opened. Then started to close. Then opened again.
“The choice is entirely up to her,” George said.
Charlotte decided then and there that she loved him. As much as one could decide such a thing. Also, she’d only known him for five minutes. She wasn’t as fanciful as that.
George turned to her with a slightly sheepish smile. “I should go back because I suspect that by now there are some very anxious guards who think I am kidnapped. Charlotte?”
She looked up at him, utterly beyond words.
He took her hand and leaned down, brushing his lips across her knuckles. “I hope I see you in there.”
She could only stare.
“And if so,” George said, letting her fingers slip through his, “I shall be the one standing next to the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
He strode off, resplendent in his richly embroidered coat.
“Do not tell me you are still hesitating?” Adolphus said.
Charlotte turned slowly to her brother. She’d quite forgotten he was there. “Well,” she said slowly, looking down at the detestable gown Princess Augusta had forced on her, “first I need to change.”
George
St. James’s Palace
The Reception Hall
Later that evening
George was terrified.
Could a person be terrified and elated at the same time? It must be possible, because he was feeling both, along with dread.
Fear.
No, that was the same thing as dread.
Did that count? Both, together? If fear and dread were synonyms that meant they were the same thing and thus it was only one emotion he was feeling, not two.
He looked down at his hands. Were they twitching?
No, but were they shaking? Perhaps, but there was a chill in the air. That could be the reason.
Were shaking and twitching synonyms? Now that was an interesting question. He’d have to say no. Not really. There was an appreciable difference between shaking and twitching. Not like fear and dread. Fear was a lesser form of dread, but shaking was not at all the same movement as twitching. You couldn’t compare the two.
The two pairs of words, that was. The whole point was that he was comparing each pair within itself.
He took a breath. Stop, he told himself. Calm your mind.
This happened sometimes.
Often.
More than he wished.
His brain seemed to run off without him, and he could not control his thoughts. That was the worst part of it, because shouldn’t a man be able to control his own mind? He was the King. If he could not rule his own mind, how could he expect to rule anything else?
And now he was terrified. And elated.
As previously mentioned.
It was all because of her. Princess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. No, they were married now. She was Queen Charlotte of Great Britain and Ireland.
She was a queen now. His queen.
George had not been looking for her when they’d met in the chapel garden. It was just that they’d told him she’d run off, and he’d felt such overwhelming relief and embarrassment—again, with the contradictory combination of emotions.
He’d needed air.
He had been feeling so confident. They’d found him a new doctor, a Scot who practiced in London. It had only been a week, but George had been feeling quite himself again, like a man ready to get married. But then that little toad of a servant had come and told Reynolds that the bride had gone missing. George had looked down, and his hands had begun to twitch, and all he could think was—
Escape.
No bride, no wedding. He did not need to be there.