“Agreed. Local roads all the way, the more circuitous the better.” Byrne’s eyes hadn’t left Louise’s. They were darker than dark, solemn as Judgment Day, brimming with closed thoughts. They made her shiver. “Give me a moment to tidy up here, Mr. Brown, before the party re-boards. Have one of the princess’s ladies bring her a fresh gown and shawl.”
“Will do, lad.” And the Scot was off again, bawling out orders for a change of horses in the next town, an altered route, and a faster pace with fewer stops along the way.
Louise sat very still, trying to catch her breath. Her knees burned where they’d struck the hard coach floor. Other than that she felt no pain. Stephen Byrne sat down on the bench across from her, his long legs eating up the space between them. He stared at her in a way that reduced the panic and terror of minutes earlier to a gray shadow, but made her uneasy and mindful of her disastrous appearance.
“You’re being rude,” she said, “looking at me that way. Leave me to rearrange myself.”
He didn’t move. “Why?” he said.
“Why? Isn’t it obvious? So that I may restore my appearance in privacy.” She smoothed her skirts, happily in much better shape than her bodice.
But the dress as a whole had well and good been ruined, if not by powder burns then—as she’d already accused him—by his big hands. His big, strong hands that had touched her flesh and left it feeling pleasantly, if disturbingly, warm. She dared not meet his eyes. Dared not let a hint of cordiality into her voice or he’d know that she was feeling things she shouldn’t be feeling.
“No,” he said. “It’s not that. I want to know why you intentionally sacrificed yourself. You put your body between a gunman’s weapon and the queen.”
“You think I was being patriotic?” She laughed. Did she sound a little hysterical? “She’s my mother.”
“Of course. But you didn’t know there were blanks in his pistol.”
“No, I didn’t. And I wasn’t trying to make a martyr of myself. Or take a bullet for her. I was attempting to smack his arm out of the way, dislodge the gun. But I lost my balance and fell into his gun’s path as a result of my haste. It was quite clumsy of me.”
She felt more embarrassed than anything, what with the lingering sensations of his fingers plying open her bodice. And why was he staring at her so critically? The nerve of the man.
“That was one of the bravest acts I’ve ever witnessed,” he said, his stone-cold-sober gaze holding her eyes, making it impossible for her to look away.
She didn’t know what to say, but he gave her no time to say it. In the next second he was up and out of the carriage, making way for Lady Car who, with frightened eyes and tear-stained face, rushed in, carrying an armful of clothing.
Eight
“Off on her honeymoon, she is. Lucky gal,” Amanda said. “Oh, Henry, I wish you’d been there.”
“Been where?” Her husband’s attention remained on his black medical bag. He carefully wrapped two more vials of amber liquid in gauze and packed them, with several white paper envelopes of powders, into it.
As a physician Henry Locock diagnosed illnesses and diseases and dispensed medications but left broken bones and other injuries to the lowly surgeons. Because surgery required work with the hands, its practitioners were afforded less prestige. The theory being that manual labor of any sort was ungentlemanly—a notion that she thought laughable.
As the wife of a physician, if Amanda wished she could be presented in court, whereas the spouse of a surgeon or pharmacist could not. But the intrigues and formalities of Victoria’s court held little interest for Amanda. She only cared for their effects, good or ill, on her dearest friend, the Princess Louise . . . and for the chances she sometimes got, as Louise’s guest, to hear the exquisite music of great composers and musicians of the day.
“Been where? Why, at the wedding concert, my love. Weren’t you listening to me? The music, it was like nothing I’ve ever heard.” She came up behind Henry and hugged him around the waist, lying her cheek against his shoulder blade. “It was so very beautiful, the Great Hall all hung with garlands of flowers, and more violins, harps, and trumpets than Eddie could count on his little fingers.”
“I always say, more musicians than you can count on your fingers is far too many.”
She laughed at him. “You never said such a thing.”
Henry Locock turned to face her, his eyes twinkling with mischief, and captured his wife in his long arms. He towered over her petite figure by two heads and was a good deal thinner around than she, even when she wasn’t pregnant, but she felt there could be no more perfect match for her.
“How do you know what I say when I’m away from you?” he teased. “Do you know me that well?” He kissed her on the mouth, and she let her lips linger on his. This was more happiness than she believed she deserved.
“You are an ongoing mystery to me, sir. But I am learning a little more each day. I doubt that caring for your patients has given you time to even think about royal orchestras and such.”
He smiled down at her. “So true.” He gently freed himself from her embrace. “And now, I must be off. I have more calls to make than will fit in one day. Yet I must make every one or we lose patients.”
“If you had fewer, you’d have more time to spend at home with your wife. We might have succeeded all the sooner at making a brother or sister for Eddie.”
“It’s hardly work, with you, my dear.” He bussed her affectionately on the cheek. “I promise, we’ll send the little bugger off to bed early tonight and spend some time together, alone. Shall we?”
Amanda let out a little squeal of delight, which attracted the attention of her son, sitting on the floor amid an assortment of pots and spoons, whacking out discordant music and singing gleefully as though to drown out his parents’ chatter.
“It’s all right, darling,” she reassured her son as she patted her husband’s backside on his way out the door. “Mummy’s just happy.”
Eddie shrugged and banged away.
“Oh, that’s a good merry tune it is,” she told him. “Just a few more minutes, though. Then we need to be off to the shop.”
Amanda had been working at the Women’s Work Society since Louise opened it a few years earlier. The consignment shop was already a grand success. Its purpose was to provide women without means of support a place to sell their crafts and handwork. Amanda would have gladly worked there for nothing—just to help those who were now in the same desperate situation she’d once found herself.
Thankfully, she had a husband to provide for her, but she still enjoyed the satisfaction of earning a small income to benefit her little family. Despite Louise’s generosity, which had helped Henry set up his practice, and the money he earned from his patients, they would be eating less well without the salary Louise pressed upon her.
While Eddie finished his concert, Amanda sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of hot Darjeeling tea and recalled times past, just to remind herself of the blessings she’d been given. She recalled, with crystal clarity, that first day when she met Louise at the art school . . .
Amanda had been down on her knees, scrubbing the stone steps that led up from the street to the door of the National Art Training School in Kensington. She slopped soapy water from her wooden bucket onto the sooty slabs. Her chapped fingers clamped down on the boar bristle brush, and she scrubbed until her arms and shoulders ached.