"I'm well aware of that, Your Majesty. As is everyone in London."
Wales laughed as Sam's gaze narrowed. "There, you see, your reputation has preceded you."
"You might mention to Miss Ionides that I contribute generously to charity," Sam drawled. "Several of yours, as I recall," he remarked pointedly, one brow raised faintly at the heir to the throne.
"Oh, ho! So it's blackmail and chastisement for my directness," the prince noted cheerfully. "Would you be placated, Alex, by a charitable nature?"
"Charitable in a great many ways, Miss Ionides," Sam interposed smoothly.
She knew what he meant; everyone within hearing knew what he meant, and she kept her voice temperate with effort. "I'm sure you are, Lord Ranelagh, and I commend you on your benevolence, but as I mentioned yesterday, I have a very busy life."
"There. You see, Sam? Just as I said. Now, come," the prince declared, taking Sam by the arm, "come entertain Lillie with your racing expertise. She wishes to parlay her money into a windfall, and if anyone can help her, you can. Excuse us." Familiar with having his wishes obeyed, Wales took Sam with him, and the viscount spent the next hour helping Lillie Langtry, the prince's paramour, bet on sure winners.
But even the Prince of Wales couldn't long prevail on Sam's good nature, and after the fourth race, which brought Lillie another generous return on her investment, Sam made his bow.
"All good wishes on your pursuit." Lillie gazed in Alex's direction. "But as a woman of great wealth, Miss Ionides is in a position to determine her own course in life."
"The advantage of having money," Sam replied lazily, taking note of Alex's mildly distracted air. "Although it allows a certain degree of impulsiveness as well."
"While there are those of us with neither luxury," Lillie murmured.
He couldn't with courtesy agree. "If Miss Ionides refuses me again," he said instead, "I'll be back to add to your winnings."
"Sam, dear, you were more than generous with your discerning eye for winning horseflesh. And I have plenty of time to feather my nest."
"Make sure Wales pays for your company, darling. He can afford it."
Lillie glanced at the prince, who was in conversation with several of his cronies. "I'm doing well," she said quietly.
"Better, at any rate." The viscount knew of the Jersey Lily's impoverished background as the daughter of a clergyman.
"Yes, much. And thank you for all the wins today."
"My pleasure." Sam grinned. "And now we'll see if Jorges has sufficiently bored Miss Ionides."
"Along with all the others," Lillie added with a nod of her head at the throng of men surrounding Alex.
"She looks weary of smiling, don't you think?"
"She does, rather. And you feel you can alter that stoic smile?" Her query was playful.
"Of course I can. If only the lady would overlook the burden of my reputation."
"She plays at amour occasionally herself, it's said."
"So why not with me?"
Lillie's eyes sparkled. "Why not indeed, when you have so much to offer."
But Sam was cautious in his approach this time, standing at the fringe of the throng for a short period, listening to the conversation, watching Alex's response, trying to gauge the extent of her boredom against the protocol of leaving before the prince. Personally, he cared little for Wales's sense of consequence, but Miss Ionides had given him the impression she proceeded with less rashness.
He entered the conversation when Princess Louise began discussing Edgar Boehm's newest sculpture. [2] A sculptor herself as well as Boehm's lover, the princess was waxing eloquent on the portrait he'd recently completed of her mother's servant, John Brown. [3]
"Did the John Brown sculpture appear at the Academy show?" Sam asked.
"Yes. It received much acclaim," Princess Louise proudly replied, always a spirited advocate of her lover's work.
Sam smiled. "As did your work, Princess, I hear. The Times said your Daphne was a triumph."
"They were kind in their praise," she noted modestly. "Have you seen the show, Lord Ranelagh?"
"Only quickly, I'm afraid."
"Then you must go again. Even Mama has gone twice."
"Perhaps I might. Has anyone been lucky at the track today?"
Immediately, a collective sigh of relief seemed to emanate from the group, and several people quickly responded. Everyone was aware of the princess's unhappy marriage to the Marquess of Lome, who was homosexual, so her interest in Boehm was understandable, but the possibility of inadvertently speaking out of turn on either subject always made for a certain awkwardness. Racing was so much more comfortable a topic. As the conversation became animated, Sam was able to approach Alex with apparent casualness.
"You should have been a diplomat, Lord Ranelagh," Alex observed, Sam's finesse worthy of praise. "Everyone finds it difficult to discuss Boehm with the princess."
"You included?"
"Of course. One must agree with her or bear her displeasure, and while the man has talent-" She shrugged.
"It's his other talents that charm the princess."
"No doubt."
"Speaking of such talents," he said, smiling.
She surveyed him, a half-smile barely curving her mouth. "You're persistent at least."
"Did you think I wouldn't be?"
"I didn't think of you at all, my lord," she replied, perjuring herself in self-defense.
"While you quite effectively ruined my peace of mind and my night."
"You spent the night alone, then?" she noted archly, recognizing the weariness of debauch when she saw it.
He hesitated.
"I dislike men who lie."
His teeth flashed white in a smile. "How do you feel about evasion?"
"So you weren't alone, as if I didn't know."
"Were you?"
"No."
He was surprised at the degree of his annoyance. "Did you enjoy yourself?" he drawled.
"Did you?"
"No," he said brusquely, unsure why he chose to be honest. "I didn't."
"My condolences, then. My three-year-old nephew and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. He likes when I read him stories about animals that talk."
"You're a bloody little bitch," he said, but his smile matched the amusement in her eyes.
"That's no concern of yours, is it?"
"I could make it my concern."
"You can't without my leave."
"Why is that?"
Her large eyes seemed to grow larger. "Do you always assert your authority, Lord Ranelagh?"
"Rarely."
"Don't even think of doing it with me."
He smiled. "Am I supposed to be intimidated?"
"Cautioned perhaps. I don't take kindly to coercion."
"You might like it. St. Albans and Courts were older, weren't they?"
"This conversation is over," she said tartly.
"I only meant in play, Miss Ionides. Think about it."
"Go to bloody hell," she said in an undertone, and walked away.
He should have been more tactful, and if it had been anyone else, he probably would have been. But she provoked him-an oddity in a woman-and if he were inclined to introspection, he might say her pronounced independence served as some benighted challenge. But he wasn't introspective, nor was he easily daunted when lured by such flagrant sensuality. Nor was he unaware of the contradiction between her words and her heated gaze.
A shame she wouldn't allow herself to do what she wished to do.
A shame he wasn't more patient.
Damn his conceit, Alex reflected hotly, her long-legged stride indication of her anger. Ladies didn't stride, or at least they didn't in these cursed tight skirts, she furiously thought, easing into a more sedate gait, searching the crowded enclosure for a quiet corner in which to compose herself. Whenever she was in Ranelagh's presence, she found herself exasperated by his unabashed cheekiness, disturbed by his brazen virility, reminded as well-the disconcerting voice inside her head whispered-that his extraordinary talents in bed were the stuff of legend.
[2] Princess Louise, the only one of Queen Victoria's daughters to be considered anything near a beauty, first met Joseph Edgar Boehm, a Hungarian born in Vienna who had been living in London for six years, when she started classes at the National Art Training School. Fourteen years older than Princess Louise, married with a young family, the blue-eyed, curly-haired, tall, slim, and wiry-like "a battered soldier," sculptor-in-ordinary to the queen, had achieved fame in English court circles with his statue of Queen Victoria, unveiled at Windsor Castle in 1869.
Princess Louise was already involved with Boehm at this time, and their relationship was of such concern to the queen that she deliberately sought out an appropriate husband for her daughter. Eventually, the Marquess of Lome, son of the Duke of Argyll, was chosen, because Louise very much wanted to live in Britain, she said, and the fact that Lome was homosexual may have been an asset. Louise spent very little time with Lome before they were married on March 21, 1871, at Windsor. Evidence from Louise's writings suggests that the couple did engage in physical marital relations, although according to some sources the physical relationship ended soon after the honeymoon.
Two years after their marriage, Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lome moved into an apartment in Kensington Palace, which happened to be close to both Boehm's studio and his home. Princess Louise continued to practice sculpture, working in Boehm's studio. In 1878, shortly after her old teacher Mary Thornycroft moved to Melbury Road, Louise had a studio built on the grounds of Kensington Palace. Godwin was her architect, and he explained the task to his architectural students: "I built the studio 17 feet high and put over it a kind of Mansard roof, with windows looking into the garden. The walls are of red brick, there are green slates on the roof to match the old house… and all the light is reflected so as to reduce the horizontal ceiling as much as possible. This studio seems perfectly satisfactory to the Princess, to Mr. Boehm, the sculptor (for it is a sculptor's studio) and also to myself."
The princess's relationship with Boehm continued throughout the 1880s, and the circumstances of Boehm's death in his studio in the company of Princess Louise on December 12, 1890, provided the press with much speculation. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's version from his diaries is generally believed:
It was during one of these visits [of the princess to Boehm's studio] that while he was making love to her Boehm broke a blood-vessel and died actually in the Princess's arms. There was nobody else in the studio or anywhere about… and the Princess had the courage to take the key of the studio out of the dead man's pocket, and covered with blood as she was and locking the door behind her, got a cab and drove to Laking's [the Queen's physician], whom she found at home and took back with her to the studio. Boehm was dead and they made up a story between them to the effect that it had been while lifting or trying to lift one of the Statues that the accident occurred.
The sculptor Alfred Gilbert, who occupied a studio in the same premises, became an accomplice to their concocted story by taking responsibility for finding the body. Princess Louise championed him for the rest of his life, provided him with accommodations at Kensington Palace in later years, and saw that his ashes were buried at St. Paul's Cathedral when he died.
[3] I'm always interested when I run across another mention of Queen Victoria's personal servant, John Brown. I mentioned him in the notes for
According to Queen Victoria's journal (parts of which were copied by her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, before the original was destroyed-not an unusual circumstance in Victorian times, when appearances counted more than the truth), John Brown in October 1850 was "a good looking, tall lad of twenty-three with fair curly hair, so very good humoured and willing,-always ready to do whatever is asked, and always with a smile on his face." An indiscreet comment, of course, immediately comes to mind.
John Brown was a gillie at Balmoral from 1849 and in charge of the ponies there from 1855. Three years later the queen appointed him her personal servant in Scotland, to wait upon her at all times. At the end of 1864 (Prince Albert had died in 1861) Brown went south to be on duty at Osborne, too, and in February 1865 he was appointed her personal servant wherever she was, not only in Scotland. She described him to her eldest daughter as "so quiet, has such an excellent head and memory, and is besides so devoted, and attached and clever and so wonderfully able to interpret one's wishes."
When Queen Victoria made him her personal servant outside Scotland in 1865, he was thirty-seven and she thirty-nine.
The queen and Prince Albert had a small hut at Balmoral, where they could escape from the formality of life. At her husband's death, this property went to the Prince of Wales. Now Victoria needed once more "some little Spot" to go occasionally for a night or two of quiet and seclusion. In 1866 she began planning additions to a small lodge at Glasallt Shiel, and on October 1, 1868, she slept there for the first time. Sir Henry Ponsonby felt that she always returned "much the better and livelier" for her visits to the shiel, although he wouldn't himself have chosen so lonely a spot. On March 29, 1883, John Brown died, leaving the house the queen was building for him at Baile-na-Coille incomplete. The Glasallt became, according to her journal, "now most terrible for her to visit-it is like death, far more than the peaceful Kirkyard… The Queen can never live at the Glasallt again. The whole thing was planned and arranged by him. He meant everything there. That bright Chapter in her saddened life is closed forever!"
In 1865, Victoria had published a small number of copies of