He shook sense back into his head and finally managed to form words. “I beg your pardon, Your Royal Highness. I need to know if an intruder or anyone at all—staff, maids, a messenger—was admitted to your sister’s room.”
“No, sir!” Beatrice burst out. “There were just those disgusting, horrid rats.” She blinked up at him, eyes bright with tears, face splotchy as a toddler’s after a weepy tantrum. “I saw them first. Glowing eyes beneath my bed when I bent down to retrieve a pencil I’d dropped.”
“And a letter? Did you see a note of any kind?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?” The words came out more harshly than he’d intended.
“I-I’m pretty sure.” The girl’s voice broke. She stared at him, her lower lip trembling as if he had scolded her.
Louise rocked her sister in her arms. “Please, can’t this wait? What purpose is served by reminding her of the filthy beasts? And how can knowing whether there were two or twenty people in the room, or letters were left about . . . how can that matter?” She stroked Beatrice’s long blond hair with heartbreaking tenderness. “The creatures must have come in through the air vent. Awful things. Now please, do leave us.”
There was extraordinary determination and power in her voice, and in those lovely sky blue eyes, although they looked everywhere but directly at him. She seemed frustrated that he was ignoring her attempts to dismiss him, as if she wasn’t accustomed to the help ignoring her commands. A little bit of her mother in her, he thought. But he suspected she was more upset than angry, only trying to protect her little sister from further distress.
And she was right about one thing.
Whether or not the governess and young princess saw the note was of little importance. It must have arrived at the same time as the rats. And now that he knew that neither the little princess nor the woman with her had seen anyone in the room, he also knew that both rodents and letter must have been delivered while they were away from the room. Because he was certain that the rats’ appearance was not by way of their wandering randomly through vents in the walls. They were meant to cause hysteria, to strike fear in royal breasts. And where better to accomplish that than in the intimacy of the youngest family member’s privy chamber?
“I’m sorry,” Byrne said. “I’ll go immediately and inform the queen of the situation.”
He was halfway down the hallway when he heard light steps running after him.
“Wait! Wait there. Don’t you go a step farther, sir.”
He slowed down, smiling at Louise’s challenge even before he turned to face her. But he kept walking backward, wanting to get to Victoria before Brown finished with his rat extermination.
“Yes, Your Royal Highness?”
Louise marched toward him, looking a force to be reckoned with. Shoulders back, head high, eyes aflame—absolutely breathtaking. “Who are you, sir, and what exactly are you doing in the family quarters?”
He laughed, amused. She was challenging him? He stopped his backward march and planted his feet, forcing her to come to an abrupt halt in front of him.
“My name is Stephen Byrne. I’m here under the authority of Her Royal Majesty’s Secret Service, on a mission of dire importance. And you are delaying me, Princess.” He gave her a stony look . . . which seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
“And exactly what mission is that, sir?” Her eyes dropped from his face, down the length of his outfit.
At first he thought her gaze critical of his choice of clothing. Many people in London were. But his garments satisfied more practical requirements than the fashion of the day. The leather duster and vest were a kind of armor, offering far more protection from a knife attack or even a fall from a horse than any cloth topcoat. Plus it hid the Colt strapped to his hip. And he favored for durability the sturdy dark blue canvas material and riveted seams of his pants over anything available in England.
Too late, he realized his garments weren’t what interested her. He followed her gaze to the paper corner peeking from his pocket. Before he could stop her, Louise had reached out and plucked the note away.
“Is this it? Is this the letter you were asking my sister about?”
“Give that to me.”
Louise lifted a brow at his tone, ignored his outstretched hand, and muttered something about manners and Americans.
She uncrumpled the scrap of paper. Her eyes flicked over the words before he snapped it out from her fingertips.
The lovely heat in her cheeks drained away to white ash. She looked away from him and anchored her bottom lip between her teeth, as though trying to process what she’d just read.
“Now that you’ve seen,” he said, “you’ll know why I need to speak with your mother. Immediately.”
“Yes, yes of course.” A hand fluttered to her throat. She wavered on her feet.
Instinctively, he clasped his hand around her arm to steady her. Within the delicate goldenrod fabric, she felt fragile to his touch. He released his grip almost at once for fear of bruising her.
“Are you all right, Princess?”
“Yes. I think so.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to rally herself.
When she opened them again, their gazes connected. He thought he saw a brilliant little spark behind her eyes. But in the next second it was snuffed out. She hastily looked away from him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “You must think me terribly rude. I didn’t mean to shout at you or accuse. It’s just that this is all so disturbing. Rats and threats and”—she hesitated—“and everything.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“Do you know your way from here to my mother’s office? No, of course you don’t. It’s a rat’s maze. Oh dear, that was an unfortunate choice. Here then, follow me, Mr. Byrne.”
Five
Brash. Coarse. Unnervingly powerful.
What a horrid, ill-mannered man, Louise thought as she raced through Buckingham’s maze of corridors with her mother’s agent close behind her. But recalling that vile note set her thoughts spinning off in a different direction.
How often, she wondered, do we fail to recognize a critical moment in our lives while it’s actually happening?
This, she couldn’t help believing, was one of those special moments. And not just because of a few silly rats. She had the oddest sense that time itself was waiting for her to open her eyes and take notice of the importance of this particular day, this singular moment, because nothing—nothing—ever would be the same for her. Maybe not for any of them.
Her skin prickled with apprehension as she lengthened her stride, aware of Byrne close behind her—keeping up easily. He moved more like a predator, an animal, than a man. Silent, serious, instinctively tuned into his surroundings. Her nerves tingled with an uneasy awareness of his presence. And then, at last, they were at their destination.
From inside her mother’s private office, the same the queen had shared with her beloved Prince Albert when he was alive, Louise could hear familiar male voices. On no other day, under no less urgent circumstances, would she have dared interrupt a meeting between Victoria and her prime minister. But no one stood at the ready to stop them or give permission, and circumstances dictated action not protocol.
She rapped twice on the heavy oak door. Stephen Byrne didn’t even wait for a response. He pushed past her, shoved wide the door, and she followed his bold entrance into the room to face the five astonished faces of PM Gladstone, Gladstone’s secretary, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, her mother’s secretary, and the queen herself.