Royal - Danielle Steel Page 0,33
had kept that a secret from her family as well. He was never mentioned in a single one of the queen’s letters, until after his death when she said how sorry she felt for his mother, but she appeared to have no idea that Charlotte was mourning him as well.
Her travel papers were in the leather box, in the name of “Charlotte White.” There was nothing in the box to identify her as “Charlotte Windsor,” or as a royal princess, except the letters from the queen signed “Mama,” sent from Buckingham Palace and their other homes. There were letters in the letter box too, from Charlotte’s mother and both her sisters and a few signed “Papa.” The box was too full to contain all the letters. The rest were in the desk drawers. And when she took all the papers out to read them, she saw that there were initials inside the box at the bottom. They weren’t Charlotte’s initials, they began with “A,” presumably the queen’s. Charlotte had kept a multitude of secrets until her sudden death, and in the end, had taken them to her grave. The countess had known the whole story, but hadn’t told the queen either, since she didn’t seem to know. Perhaps she was afraid of the king’s and queen’s reactions to their seventeen-year-old daughter getting pregnant by the Hemmingses’ son, and married in secret without her parents’ permission, to prevent her child from being born illegitimate. Some of the mysteries remained unsolved and would be forever, but Lucy could guess. Charlotte was almost surely the youngest princess who had been sent away from London to escape the bombs, and the same one who had died, supposedly of “pneumonia,” on the same day that Charlotte White had died in Yorkshire, shortly after childbirth at seventeen. It wasn’t a coincidence. Lucy was certain now that she was the same girl.
There was also a copy of Anne Louise’s birth certificate, with her father’s last name, and the death certificate of Charlotte White, apparently put there by the countess, with “pneumonia” listed as the cause of death, not hemorrhaging after childbirth. It was all there. And when she peered into the box for a last look, she saw a narrow gold chain bracelet with a heart dangling from it and put it on her wrist. She felt like a thief taking it, but she’d never had anything as pretty and couldn’t resist. She would give it to Annie one day. She remembered Charlotte wearing it and had noticed it when she arrived.
As Lucy sat back in the chair at Charlotte’s desk, contemplating the piles of papers in front of her, she realized that she had everything she needed to blackmail the Royal House of Windsor, if she wished to do so. It was a powerful feeling that she knew about a secret marriage, a baby conceived out of wedlock by their seventeen-year-old daughter, and the child that had resulted from it, and she knew the real cause of Charlotte’s death, and she was sure that the royal family were aware of none of those things. Lucy knew everything they didn’t. How much would they pay for the information, and to keep her quiet, and not create a scandal involving their dead daughter? But she had gotten married, and the baby had been born legitimate.
But she didn’t want money, she wanted Annie, the baby that she loved, and they didn’t know existed. They would never miss her, and if Lucy gave her up now, she knew it would break her heart. Remaining silent now would mean depriving Annie of life as a royal princess, but whatever she did now, Annie’s mother was still dead. She could give her up to a life of palaces and royal blood, but Lucy firmly believed she could give her a mother’s love as none of the royals would. And if things had been different and Henry had loved her, Annie would have been their child, not Charlotte’s. This was a way of keeping Henry close to her forever, but more important, she could lavish love on his child. Annie would never know that she was the granddaughter of a king and queen, and if she took Annie’s birth certificate with her, no one would ever know. They would never know that there was a child, when they came to get Charlotte’s belongings and remains, and Annie would never know of the life she had missed. Only the earl and