the early blooming lilacs Lady Car had arranged in a vase beside her bed the day before, and the sundried linen beneath her cheek. Urgent-sounding footsteps raced lightly across her room. A cupboard door clicked open then snapped shut.
It occurred to Louise that a terrible emergency must have arisen during the night. But when she sat upright in bed and looked around, she saw that a silver tray had been set on her bedside table, and Car was pulling Louise’s blue day dress from the wardrobe.
Louise lifted the domed lid on the sterling salver to find a generous serving of bacon rashers and thick slices of toasted oat bread. Pots of honey and dairy-fresh butter accompanied, making enough breakfast for three.
“What’s happened to make you feel the need to fortify me so?”
Lady Car turned to her, concern mirrored in her gentle eyes as she flew back across the room with Louise’s clothing. “Your Highness, I fear this morning may prove a bit more taxing than others.”
“Oh, dear.” Louise blinked, preparing herself for the worst. Another intruder? One of her siblings ill? Her mother . . . well, it could be anything if it had to do with her. “Details then. No sugarcoating.”
“Yes, well . . .” Car set royal blue satin slippers to match Louise’s dress on the floor beside the bed. “Her Majesty has sent word that you are to rise immediately and come to her as soon as you are dressed. It appears that a serious issue has presented itself. Her secretary would only say that the queen refuses to deal with it on her own.” She shrugged her shoulders in apology. “I’m sorry, that’s all I know.”
Something her mother felt incapable of handling without her? Now she was just as curious as worried.
Louise tossed off the bedclothes, struggled out of her night shift, and made a hasty job of her toilet. While her lady laced her up Louise thrust a piece of bacon into her mouth, bit into the toast, and chewed. She sipped her tea, well sweetened with honey. She’d eaten spartanly since the attack on the coach, having lost her appetite for days after. The thought that, had there been a live bullet in the young protester’s gun, she might not now be alive, had quite unsettled her.
Louise dusted the toast crumbs from her fingertips then waved off all attempts by Car to dress her hair. “No, no. Leave it loose. It will take too much time.” Anyway, she much preferred to let her long brown tresses fall down her back. Though her mother wouldn’t like it.
“I will go with you,” Lady Car offered.
“No. It might be nothing.” But if it was serious, she didn’t want to expose the poor woman to unnecessary trauma. Best she face her mother alone.
When Louise arrived, breathless, at her mother’s suite, she knocked once then opened the door and stepped inside.
Victoria was sitting primly behind her desk in a black mourning gown whose only noticeable difference from her others was a high starched white collar held together at the throat by a simple cameo pin. The queen’s expression was stern, her eyes sparking anger, but it was not Louise’s little dragon of a mother who captured her attention. Her gaze immediately shifted across the room to stop on the two men standing at attention in the middle of the crimson-and-gold Persian carpet under Victoria’s steely gaze.
Louise clapped a hand over her mouth and gasped. John Brown and Stephen Byrne appeared to have freshly arrived from the front lines of a war.
The Scot and the Raven were a bruised, bloody, scraped, and scabby mess. Their shirts and trousers might have been torn from their bodies, run over by market carts in a filthy road, and restored to their use as garments without any attempt at laundering. And they smelled. Of various forms of alcohol, if she wasn’t mistaken.
“What happened to you two?” Louise said. “Were you attacked? Are others hurt?”
Her mother lifted a small, plump hand. “My dear child, calm yourself. The injuries are of their own foolish doing. A common bar brawl, the two of them drinking themselves to irrationality. They deserve no sympathy.”
“Oh, dear.” Louise felt a bubble of relieved laughter working its way up and pressed her lips firmly together.
“It is my understanding, having already received a bill for the cost of damages, that this display was witnessed by at least a dozen men of the town.” Victoria’s face resembled a hot, red sun just before it