Whereas, and this was what puzzled him and he noted in his journaclass="underline" The marquess of Lorne offers little more than a minor hereditary title and a modest Scotch duchy. As far as I can see, he has little money of his own and no skills other than a love of the hunt.
To Byrne’s surprise, the newspapers barely blinked at the announcement of the engagement. Instead they gossiped that this must be a rare but true love match. All of London gushed at the romance of the pairing and dismissed the unsavory rumors involving Lorne.
But Stephen Byrne was a military man accustomed to ferreting out secrets. And he smelled a whopper.
He didn’t have to wonder for long why a Scottish subject of the queen, with a less than gleaming reputation, might hold out hope of winning this particular English princess as his wife. While on an unconnected mission to the Isle of Wight, Byrne ran into two gruff old pub sitters. They were only too willing—for the price of a couple of pints—to gossip for his benefit on the subject of the royal family.
“Years back, when the princess was not much more’n a girl, she showed up on the island with only a tutor for company. Polite folks said her mama sent her here to study, away from London’s distractions.”
“At Osborne House,” the other local man supplied, “the royal family’s estate.”
“And what did folks who weren’t so polite say?” Byrne asked, after offering another round of liquid lubrication.
The more talkative of the two leaned closer to the queen’s agent. “Was a rumor, sayin’ the queen was pure frantic to get her daughter away from boys at her school. Chaps that might lead her astray.” He winked.
In fact Byrne had already learned that Louise, who was perhaps seventeen or eighteen at the time, had been studying at the National Art Training School in South Kensington. Some of the students were a bit wild and experimented with strong drink, laudanum, and other drugs. He wouldn’t have been shocked if sex had been part of the mix.
If Louise had gotten herself deflowered or, worse yet, knocked up, Byrne speculated the queen would have had more than enough reason to remove her daughter from her unsavory friends and shield her from court gossip. Aside from Louise’s reputation as the wild child of Victoria’s family (which might mean anything or nothing, given the shaky validity of London’s rumor mill), if she was no longer a virgin her choice of husbands would be severely limited.
But Lorne—what if Lorne had his own secrets to hide? Even if he were innocent of what British law termed “debauchery,” a man with his eye on gaining status in society would make no complaint against a wife who came to him experienced, ruined, tarnished, compromised, or whatever label society cared to brand her with, particularly if she provided an entrée into the royal family.
Now, back at Buckingham, Byrne caught the eye of an equerry of the royal mews and handed over the reins of his horse. He strode toward the diplomatic entrance to the palace to report a different sort of news to the queen, but his mind lingered on Louise. What did a spirited young princess think of the match her mother had made for her? At the very least, it would seem, the queen had set her daughter up for a celibate life.
To his mind, this was an unthinkably cruel act and an utter waste of womanhood. The few times he’d been in a position to observe the princess, his body had responded with healthy approval. And, he’d noticed, he was not alone in his lust. The woman was a looker.
Louise’s passing figure turned men’s heads everywhere she went. Moreover he suspected she rather enjoyed the attention. Her eyes sparkled with sensual playfulness. The fact that she always behaved in the most proper way, at least whenever he’d observed her, made her all the more intriguing to men.
Distracted by these troubling thoughts, Byrne watched the gray, frost-covered paving stones pass beneath his feet without really seeing them. He crossed the courtyard, took the stone steps, approaching the door that would take him into the great hall and from there to the queen’s private offices.
The heavy chestnut wood door, studded with fist-size iron bolts, swung open ahead of him. He paid no attention to whoever had conveniently opened it for him until it struck him that something solid blocked his way, entirely filling the doorway.
Forced to stop and wait until the object moved out of his path, Byrne looked up to find a towering, kilted John Brown, fists braced on his tree-trunk hips.
“And where do you think you’re goin’, laddie?” the Scot’s voice rumbled.
Laddie? Byrne glared up at the man. Even bareheaded, Brown gave the appearance of standing nearly to the height of the tallest of the queen’s fur-helmeted Hussars.
“I’m on Her Majesty’s business,” Byrne said. “She expects me.”
“She does, does she? You’ll have to come back after she returns from the north.”
Byrne refused to be intimidated. Brown might have charmed the queen, but the American agent knew the man for what he was—an iron-nosed, hard-drinking bully.
“I need to see Her Majesty before she leaves for Balmoral.”
“She’s with the prime minister.”
“Gladstone?”
“And Mr. Disraeli.”
“In the same room?” Benjamin Disraeli was the former PM and a fierce rival of Gladstone’s. “She’s a brave woman.”
“I’ll not argue that,” Brown said. “Soon as I get those two rascals away from her, we’re off. As it is, we’re behind schedule. I don’t intend to have her out on the road after dark tonight.”
“Then I’d better go straight in and give her an excuse to dismiss them.”
Brown folded his arms over his chest and stood firm. “Turn around, Raven, and fly away.”
Byrne narrowed his eyes at the other man. No one but Victoria called him Raven these days. The name Byrne was Irish for blackbird. Raven had been his code name during the American War between the States. The queen fancied pet names for those around her, and she seemed delighted to have discovered this one for him. “It sounds deliciously sinister,” she’d once told him. At the time he’d thought she must have been reading that queer American author, Mr. Poe.
He was trying to gauge how far to push Brown when a shriek of terror echoed through the castle and continued reverberating off the stone walls even as both men spun toward the cry.
“The kitchen?” Byrne said, thinking perhaps one of the maids had burnt herself or dropped a tray of china, although he’d heard no crash from the basement where the servants labored.
“The bairn’s wing!” Brown shouted, as though to orient himself. The Scot drew a dirk of impressive length from his belt and took off at a loping run.
As Brown seemed to have forgotten him in the frenzy of the moment, Byrne took it upon himself to follow rather than find his own way to the trouble. He was far from familiar with the twisting halls of the palace, a veritable maze of hundreds of rooms.
High-pitched screeches to rival the performance of an operatic soprano echoed through the hallways, growing ever louder as they ran.
Definitely female, he thought. Definitely hysterical. Two of them, he guessed, from the varying octaves.
Suddenly Byrne feared the intelligence he’d come to report to the queen might have arrived too late.
Only that morning, he’d paid an informant for shocking news. The Fenians, Irish radicals, apparently had succeeded in doing what Scotland Yard and the Secret Service most feared. They’d brought in two explosives experts from outside of the country, intending to employ them in carrying out a dramatic attack. Their aim was to impress upon the world the importance of the Irish cause. His man couldn’t say where or when they would strike, or even what the plot might entail. Only that it somehow involved the royal family.