audible whimper and fell back two steps, a hand over his heart, gasping for air. “Gads! What have you done, boy?”
In the awkward silence that followed, Donovan regained his composure. “You have no right to criticize me, Morris. The way you and Rossetti use this studio, your women coming and going, day and night. Why can I not have a little fun as well?”
Fun? she thought.
Her head was hurting worse after the exertion of standing up and defending herself and her lover. Louise plopped back down on the divan, exhausted, and dropped her face into her palms. But not before she saw Rossetti lunge forward and cuff Donovan on the side of his head. The violence of the blow sent the young man staggering. He fell to the floor with a look of shock and wounded pride.
“Stupid boy! Have you no sense at all? Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve made for yourself? For all of us? What do you think our good queen will say when she learns her daughter has been fornicating with a guttersnipe?”
Louise winced, her eyes still covered. The artist made their love sound wicked, dirty . . . and it wasn’t. It was a wonderful, sweet miracle. Couldn’t he see that? Their bodies had fitted together so perfectly. It was as if they’d been fashioned to become one. Adam and Eve. Tristan and Isolde. Paris and Helena. They were meant to be together.
She loved Donovan. And he clearly loved her if he wished to be so tender and close to her. How could true love shared between a man and a woman be wrong?
But in the weeks that followed, she remembered bitterly, the dangers of a princess falling in love with the wrong man became all too clear.
Eighteen
Balmoral, 1871
Within hours after the royal family’s arrival at Balmoral, Byrne had been certain he would go mad with restlessness. Something about that day when they’d left London for the north haunted him. Something far worse than rats. The instincts of a military man warned him he’d best find out what was setting his nerves on edge before the unknown took them all by disastrous surprise. And that was why he’d left the Scottish royal estate to trace the wedding party’s original intended route.
As Byrne had already explained to Louise, and soon after to her mother, he’d discovered what he suspected and most feared—evidence that the rat incident had been a ruse, part of a larger, more deadly plot by the Fenians to kidnap a member of the royal family.
But, unlike her daughter, the queen refused to believe him. “The vermin were obviously just a cruel prank, meant to frighten poor Baby, nothing more. We shall rise above the incident and ignore it.”
Byrne shook his head in frustration. “Let me return to London. I’ll find out who among the radicals is calling the shots. If our Secret Service boys capture the Fenian officer in charge,” he said, “we may disrupt their chain of command, get other names from him, and capture key figures in the Irish Republican movement.” To his mind, a preemptive strike was critical to the safety of the queen and her family.
“Your duty is to remain with us here, my Raven,” she insisted. “Headquarters in London will look into your theories and search for this Fenian officer.”
He had to satisfy himself with sending a courier with a message to his superiors, requesting they assign men to the hunt. After seeing off the rider, he walked back inside the castle, sat in one of the dark, empty salons, and brooded. He didn’t hold out much hope of results. His experience thus far in the queen’s Secret Service had shown him how green and untried this infant branch of the government was.
His hands tied, Byrne tried to concentrate on the task of keeping tabs on Victoria’s four youngest children, traveling with her to Scotland. Arthur, at twenty-one years old, and Leopold, just eighteen, seemed far younger and less worldly than most young men he’d met. They liked to ride and hunt with companions in the court who had accompanied the queen. Mostly they seemed content to occupy themselves in ways easy for him to monitor. Beatrice, “Baby” to the queen and sometimes to her brothers, was nearly always with her mother. Again, easy to know where she was and keep her safe. But her older sister, Louise, was a challenge.
If Victoria had given him the sole task of looking after the fourth princess, that