"I had planned to blow up Parliament, in a tribute to Guy Fawkes, but when this opportunity arose, it seemed too good to pass by. Ever since the Gunpowder Plot, they do have an inconvenient habit of inspecting the cellars before the King gives his speech."
"Very inconsiderate of them," agreed Mary sarcastically. "And then? Once the King and Queen and all their offspring are blown to little bits, what then? Do you declare a republic in the name of France?"
"No." St. George's eyes burned with such intensity that Mary would have taken a step back if Rathbone's fallen body weren't blocking her way. "I reclaim what is mine. My kingdom. My throne."
"Yours?"
"Mine," St. George repeated. "Mine by right of birth."
Knowing that she was taking a calculated risk, Mary said, with deliberate provocation, "I didn't think the King had by-blows."
One large hand pinned her about the neck, pressing hard against her throat. "You insult my birth. Be born to that Hanoverian scum — never. My father was of the true line."
He released her so abruptly that Mary stumbled back, gasping, nearly tumbling over Rathbone's inert form in the process. She wondered, belatedly, whether it might not have made more tactical sense to fall. If she were to dive for St. George's legs, bringing him down with her…
St. George drew himself up to his full height. "My father was a Stuart. King Charles the Third, by grace of God — though the Lord knows, he was shown little enough grace while he lived." His eyes were dark pools, churning with bitter memories. "Even the Pope refused to acknowledge him. It broke him. It humbled him. The rightful King of England and they all scorned him and left him to rot in a pit of drink and debt."
Mary refrained from pointing out that the drink and debt might well have been Prince Charles Edward's own doing.
"Bloody Louis wouldn't help him he when he asked. I remember it well. The look on his face when the word came. He hadn't the money, Louis said. Dear Cousin Louis." St. George's voice dripped scorn. It occurred to Mary with mild surprise that if St. George was telling the truth about his origins, King Louis of France really would have been his cousin, somewhere on his father's side. "But he had plenty of money for jewels for his Austrian whore. Louis wouldn't help us, so I helped Cousin Louis. I helped him right off his throne."
"Is that why you did it?" Mary said softly. "Joined the revolution?"
St. George gave a sharp laugh. "It certainly wasn't liberté, egalité, and fraternité."
His inflection made a mockery of the revolutionary ideals.
His French accent was much better than hers. It would be, Mary thought inconsequentially. If he were the son of the exiled Stuart pretender, he would have spent his childhood kicking about France and Italy. No wonder his Italian had been so fluent.
"Does Bonaparte know all this?" asked Mary carefully.
"Of course," said St. George, baring his teeth in a feral grin. "It works out very nicely for him, don't you agree? A monarch with right of blood on the throne, and he's spared the trouble of ruling England himself."
Put that way, it did seem rather a bargain for Bonaparte. If not necessarily for England.
There was one glaring flaw to St. George's plans. Mary wondered if St. George had spotted it. True Stuart pretender or not, there was no reason men would flock to his standard, just because the immediate royal family had been assassinated. There would be plots and counterplots, factions and cabals, and at least a dozen other claimants to the throne, all pressing their right. In short, civil war.
Wonderful for Bonaparte, not so wonderful for either England or the latest Stuart pretender.
Had St. George realized that, or was he so consumed by the thought of the throne that it never occurred to him that he might be Bonaparte's dupe? From the noble glow on his face, Mary suspected he hadn't. Like all exiles, St. George seemed to believe that at the sight of their rightful king, the people would fling down their arms and follow him, strewing rose petals and singing hosannas. Other monarchs had made that mistake before. Including his father and grandfather.
Through the fabric of the backdrop came Lady Euphemia's voice, raised insistently, "And then one dark night, there came a poor princess in perilous plight."
"Ah," said St. George. "There's our cue. After you, my dear."
Using the spear as a prod, he sent her reeling in the direction of the backdrop. They were supposed to enter stage left, but with a spear in her back, even a wooden one, Mary wasn't about to be picky. Grasping the folds of the curtain, she scrabbled for the break in the middle.
" — came a poor princess in perilous plight!" Lady Euphemia repeated loudly, as Mary stumbled out onto the stage through the gap in the curtains, blinking in the sudden glare of the footlights.
Lady Euphemia gave her a look that clearly indicated that Mary wasn't going to be offered starring roles in any future productions.
That was the least of Mary's worries.
In front of her, the theatre was a sea of swollen faces, distorted by the glare of the footlights. What would they do if she walked calmly to the center of the stage and announced that there was a madman who thought he was the Pretender to the throne in the back of the stage, and that the King's head was packed full of explosives? Nothing. Well, not nothing. There would be whispering and laughing and no one would do anything at all.
St. George, hidden behind the curtains, would have plenty of time to shove his infernal machine into the audience, light its fuse, and blow as many people as possible into tiny bits. In the audience, Mary could see a slew of familiar faces, yawning, laughing, whispering, sleeping. Innocent. Unsuspecting. Her mother and father were in the first row with Letty, her mother's mouth open as she prattled on into her husband's ear, while her father nodded, not hearing a word of it. He had clearly taken the precaution of donning his earplugs before the performance.
Frowning, Mary tried to catch Letty's eye, indicating with a jerk of her head that she should get their parents out of the theatre. Letty tilted her head and opened her eyes wide, indicating confusion. Mary's lips pressed together in frustration.
She wasn't the only one feeling frustrated. A loud harrumphing noise echoed from the prompter's pit.
Mary hastily struck a tragic pose, one hand outstretched in supplication in the general direction of the audience, eyes lifted to the heavens — or where the heavens would be, if there wasn't a large dome in the way. There was no need to feign desperation.
"Oh, is there no hero, no valiant knight, / Who will charge out and put the dragon to flight?"
Lady Euphemia bobbed her head up and down in time to the lines, beaming in open appreciation of her own poetry.
Pat on his cue, St. George strode onto the stage. Good. On the stage she could see him. On the stage he was away from his infernal machine. Mary's brain churned with fevered schemes, including "accidentally" tripping him as he crossed downstage. If he took a tumble off the platform and just happened to land head first, that should put him out of commission long enough to dismantle his infernal machine and use her brother-in-law's influence to bring the conspirators to justice. St. George and Rathbone would be hanged for treason, and Vaughn would finally be safe. Married, but safe.
There was one slight hitch. St. George didn't cross downstage. Mary could hear the restless shuffling and whispering from the audience rising to new heights. Still in her pose, Mary twisted her neck to peek over her shoulder. St. George stood like a stone effigy of a medieval warrior, looking as shocked and unsettled as Hamlet confronted with his father's ghost. Lady Euphemia emitted a veritable chorus of harrumphs, but to no avail. St. George's eyes were fixed in disbelief on something, or someone, in the audience.