The Princess Dilemma: A Victorian Royal Romance

by Heather Hiestand

  The door opened and she saw her husband all but leap from the room, quite alone. He saw her and froze, his gaze traveling from her face to where her hand rested on her midsection. His eyes widened.

  She could not allow him to hope. Letting her hand drop, she shook her head regretfully. He pursed his lips and nodded, then took her hand and pressed his lips into her palm.

  She glanced around, nervous, but the footmen present turned away tactfully. So, she closed her eyes to the opulence around her and soaked in his warm lips and even warmer breath against her skin. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Can you come to me?”

  “I don’t dare,” she whispered. She felt something drop onto her palm.

  “Coward,” he said gently, but with tenderness.

  “What was said? Are you going away? Am I?”

  “I do not know. She told me to examine my conscience with the help of my spiritual advisor.”

  “As to our marriage?”

  “No, that seems to be accepted.”

  “She didn’t write my mother.” She opened her palm and saw the ring resting there.

  “She gave me a wedding ring for you,” he said, but with a roll of his brilliant eyes this time.

  Charlotte felt giddy as she stared at the circlet of gold. A real wedding ring. “So what now?”

  “She offered to knight me, which is all very well and good, but does nothing except show the world that she doesn’t hate me.”

  “No small thing.”

  “Perhaps.” He took the ring from her and pushed it onto her finger.

  She admired it. A proper married lady at last. “So you are to go away and think.”

  “Yes. I think we will have one last chance to speak before she makes her final decision. Of course, she thinks we may have an heir on the way.”

  “I won’t tell her otherwise, unless asked directly.”

  Edward nodded, then put his hands on her shoulders. When she didn’t move away, he rubbed gently down her arms. She pressed herself against him with an inarticulate cry. Her head pressed against his chest and his arms went around her, holding her tightly while she shook.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, wiping her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  The parlor door opened and the queen stepped out. Charlotte dropped into a curtsy. The queen took in the tears and Edward’s stricken face and her own visage crumpled in sympathy. Edward bowed and when the prime minister gestured, he walked away with the man, leaving Charlotte alone in the corridor with Victoria.

  “This must be very hard on you, dear Charlotte,” Victoria said.

  “I am so very sorry for any embarrassment I’ve caused you.” She twisted the new ring on her finger.

  “God has bound the two of you together. Of course nothing will go quite right until you are living together properly.”

  Charlotte’s lips trembled. “How will that ever happen?”

  “The colonel has asked for time to consider the matter.”

  As if anything was up to him. If he had the throne…but no, he was a bastard. Victoria had all the power, this young, untried, selfish girl. Charlotte swiped at her eyes, ungracefully, with the back of her hand. The warmth of her tears reminded her of Edward’s breath on her palm and she sniffed again.

  “You must compose yourself, dear Charlotte. Wash your face then attend me in a little while.”

  Charlotte curtsied and followed Victoria down the corridor. At least the queen had ended her banishment.

  ~

  With Murdo out of town and Quintin hung over, the closest Edward had to a spiritual advisor was Lemuel Bone, though he hadn’t seen the lad for a couple of weeks. When Edward went into the shop, Lemuel’s father had been waiting on customers. That afternoon, he took himself directly to the bookshop from the palace and found Lemuel, his skin looking much improved, eating the heel of a loaf and paging through what Edward recognized as his tattoo book.

  His wrist itched, and he wondered how Lemuel would respond to his still-fresh marking.

  “Colonel!” Lemuel said, after swallowing down his bread. He grinned and closed his book. “I’ve been away visiting my uncle.”

  “Does he have a more exciting life than this?”

  “He owns three warehouses up the river.” Lemuel made a face.

  “Must have made you eager to return home.”

  Lemuel nodded. “How are you? Continuing to let your pockets to your lady love?”

  “Oh, the things we do for love.”

  “You admit that you love her, then?” Lemuel’s eyes twinkled. “That’s a change.”

  Edward sighed and pushed back his sleeve. “Product of a bad night down by the docks.”

  Lemuel glanced down. His mouth fell open. “Couple of weeks old. What is that, a ‘C’? Very dull work.”

  “The docks,” Edward repeated. “Bad night. My wife’s name begins with a ‘C.’”

  “Your wife? You married her? Where’d you get the money for the special license?” He perused Edward’s face, as if looking for guineas to pop out of his nose.

  “I married her when I was sixteen. I may have forgotten to mention that point.”

  Lemuel’s lips moved together awkwardly as he attempted to suppress his laugh while he took coins from a couple of elderly gentlemen buying newspapers. When the shop was empty again, he leaned back over Edward’s wrist. “You must love her a great deal to have marked your skin with her initial for life.”

  “Maybe I was just drunk,” he countered.

  “I assure you that it rarely occurs to any man to have a woman’s initial needled into their skin just because they find her a source of temporary fascination.”

  Half-forgotten memories of freckle-faced young Charlotte on a blanket in a meadow flitted across his mind. “Yet I’d almost forgotten her until we met again.”

  “At sixteen the world seems a source of endless adventure. How does it feel now?”

  “Shrinking, ever shrinking.” He stared at his wrist.

  “And duller by the minute,” Lemuel said.

  “So world weary for so young?”

  “Spend two weeks with my uncle and see how you feel about a life full of promise,” Lemuel muttered. “At least you’ll never forget the lady now.”

  Edward groaned.

  Lemuel grinned at him. “It’s healed enough that I can fix it for you.”

  “Fix it?” Edward stared down doubtfully. “What’s to fix?”

  “You are going to look at it for the rest of your life. Don’t you want it to be attractive?”

  He considered. The tattoo was rather workmanlike. “Like a fancy German script? She is German.”

  “I can do that,” Lemuel said. He opened his book, lifted his quill, and scratched out a design. “Nothing to it. I can create arches to turn it into a Gothic script.”

  Edward nodded. He had nothing better to do. “Come to my rooms when you are done here.”

  Lemuel nodded as Edward gave him the address. “Lay in your favorite intoxicant. It won’t hurt as much the second time, but it’s still painful.”

  “I hope you enjoy inflicting it,” Edward said to the lad with a wink, and left the shop with his paper.

  ~

  A couple of hours later, Lemuel followed Quintin into Edward’s sitting room, a small case under his arm. Edward set down his Pickwick and directed him to a table where the best light was.

  “Nice to still have so much sunlight,” Lemuel remarked, setting out his tools.

  Quintin put a lamp on the table but the lad waved it away. “I’ll be done before we need it. Better to set out a bottle for your master.”

  Quintin made a noise in the back of his throat and left the room with the lamp.

  “So, married?” Lemuel said, as Edward stripped to his shirt and sat across from him.

  “We were drunk. It would not have mattered if my cousin hadn’t have witnessed it. Actually,” he reflected, “I was told recently that he’s my uncle, not my cousin.”
r />   Lemuel chuckled. “So a princess is your wife, a cousin is your uncle…”

  “And a blackmailer would like to control me, but I won’t let that happen. No, all I have to do now is decide how to manage my wife’s future.”

  A knock came at the door and Quintin answered it, then brought a letter to Edward.

  “Open it, will you?” Edward said to his man, since Lemuel held his arm in a surprisingly iron grip.

  When Edward noticed the Victoria’s signature at the bottom of the page, he scarcely noticed Lemuel’s first pokes into his wrist with the needle. He snatched the letter with his free hand.

  “What is it?” Lemuel asked.

  “My wife’s mistress has agreed to keep her at her post. She makes a good salary. Or, she can return to Canada with me and live as a soldier’s wife.”

  “Can you keep her?”

  “I don’t even have a house,” Edward said. “No, she’ll have to stay here.”

  “Why don’t you want to be with her?”

  “Canada is no place for a princess. I might be there for years.” He glanced down at the pinpricks of blood dotting his wrist and felt nothing. His pain was in his heart. “I have to let her go, Lemuel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She is a princess, not a common lady. She doesn’t belong in the wilds, outside of society. She would have no social equal, and there is unrest there, maybe an uprising coming. I cannot take her with me. When it was Canada or Germany as our only choices, that was one thing, but to stay at the royal court, where she has family, that is different.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I found out today that there is no child,” Edward said.

  “You could keep trying,” Lemuel said, moving his needle to the bottom of Edward’s tattoo.

  The lad was extraordinarily fast. “Jealous?”

  Lemuel stayed focused on his work. “If I found a lover I wouldn’t give her up. That is all I’m saying.”

  “Maybe we can be together in a couple of years. I’ll look into selling out.”

  “If you survive this uprising you are worried about.”

  “Then she’ll be a widow. Not a bad thing. She’s not old for a widow.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-five. Old for a bride, young for a widow.”

  “I would not have thought you wanted to die.”

  “Every soldier has a death wish,” Edward said. “How could we fight otherwise? As free of bloodshed as my career has been, it’s something that is always in the back to my mind, or any soldier’s. All it takes is for another Napoleon to rise and the world is in a mess again. England needs devil-may-care fellows like me and my men.”

  “At least you have a high tolerance for pain,” Lemuel said, setting down his first needle and blotting Edward’s arm. “I’m going to put the ink in now. When this heals up you’ll have a tattoo a German princess can be proud of, not that she’ll ever see it. You will be long gone.”

  “I expect you are right,” Edward said, feeling the deliberate sting of Lemuel’s words. “But I’m making the right decision for her.”

  When the ink went into his wrist, the pain began. Edward reached for his glass then, and drank steadily while Lemuel finished.

  It was still light out by the time he was done. Lemuel declined the dinner Edward offered, saying his mother expected him at home, and left Edward to his lonely table. The pain made him unwilling to eat. Pushing aside his plate, he went to his writing table and wrote a letter to Charlotte.

  As he penned the words, he wondered if he would be able to see her again. He decided he would attempt to deliver the letter himself, and enclose Victoria’s letter, so that Charlotte could try to keep his half-sister in line. It troubled him to know he’d be too far away to help Charlotte if Victoria took some kind of petty revenge on her, those unkindnesses women can inflict upon each other so well. But Victoria had been ill-used in her life, and he hoped it had taught her kindness rather than the opposite. Charlotte had never seemed troubled by her position. She had seemed quite at home from the first moment Edward had seen her, cool and calm. Now that he knew her better, knew the stresses of her life, he was amazed by her calm exterior. Yes, she was a woman born to court life. She never let her true feelings show.

  After he had finished his letter, he debated what to do with the one hundred pounds the prime minister had given him. Should he leave it to Charlotte, knowing the money would go straight to Germany, or should he take it to Canada, and attempt to invest in something? A fur shipment, perhaps? Or should he buy something here that the soldiers would want, something he could mark up for profit?

  He pushed back his disgust at the idea of acting like a tradesman. It was a good idea. He knew what soldiers wanted, and what they were willing to pay for. When he had the money for his goods, he could try the furs idea. By the time he sold out and returned to England, he might have enough money to buy a house. It was more than he and his brothers had started with. And neither of them were nearly as proud as he was. Tapping his finger on his chin, he scratched down some ideas and went to discuss them with Quintin. If his man agreed, he’d write to Lemuel and Murdo and have them get what he needed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Victoria had told Charlotte that she no longer had to consider herself confined to her room, so she dashed out of the palace as soon as Victoria’s late morning meeting with her counselors began, desperate to stroll the gardens. The garden air was such an improvement over the inside of the palace, with its perpetually backed-up drains, that she could almost cry with relief. The scent of the grass, a note of herbaceous plantings, the gentle breeze, was all a balm to her.

  Tears came anyway, as she reached the holly hedge where she had once spoken to Edward. Victoria had given her no hint as to what Edward’s future would be. She didn’t know if she’d ever see her husband again. Standing behind the hedge, she put her hands over her eyes, trying to stem the tears that would make the skin around her eyes swell and cause talk among the queen’s ladies.

  “You look like you need this.”

  A handkerchief was thrust under her hand. She took it and dabbed at her eyes, then glanced up. The man was dressed simply in a dark, sober frock coat and striped trousers, but she recognized the trim waist and broad shoulders. Her heart skipped a beat as her gaze moved to his face. “Edward?”

  He smiled and held out his arms. She went into them willingly, but frowned as she caught a glimpse of bandage around one wrist. “What happened? You haven’t been fighting?”

  “No, just being an idiot.”

  Charlotte sniffed, then sneezed. As she put the handkerchief to her face again, she moaned, “Oh, Edward, what are we going to do?” She remembered Victoria had said that nothing would feel quite right until she was living with her husband. Was the young queen correct?

  He squeezed her then stepped back. “There is no easy answer.”

  “Of course not. Not for people like us. But we cannot go on like we are.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “I had last night to think about it. Everything became clear after I had a letter from my half-sister last night.”

  “It did? Why did she write you?”

  “She had decisions to make, too.” Edward pulled a letter from his coat, then pulled it apart and showed her another letter inside. “Read this first, Charlotte. It’s from Victoria.”

  She shook her head as she read it. “Why would she offer to let me keep my post if you went to Canada? She thinks married people should live together. She said so when we met.”

  He tilted his head and she hated the kindness in his eyes. “She may think that as a private person, but she’s also a queen. She doesn’t want me here in England, you know that.”

  “Then I will go with you.” She glanced up, feeling fierce, then felt ill as she saw his expression.

  “No, my dear girl.” He thrust the second letter into her hands. “Read this. I explained as clearly as I could.”

&n
bsp; Charlotte read the letter, feeling the tears come again. They dripped onto the paper as she read her husband’s rejection of her. “War? In Canada?”

  “It’s too dangerous for you, too isolating. It’s no place for a lady.”

  “My place is with you! Let me persuade you, please. I can follow the drum.” She crumpled his letter in one hand and clutched at his arm with the other.

  Edward shook his head. “This is for the best. In a couple of years, especially once Victoria has married and has had an heir, it will be easier for us. No one will worry about me. Lord Melbourne might be out of office by then, which would help. You see my plan to make some money. It’s good, right?”

  She pushed back his sleeve to see the bandage around his wrist. “It seems sensible, but I could help you, surely. You will have to do your work, but I can deal with the business.”

  “No. I have to sell to simple soldiers. They would not know how to act around a princess. It will not take much time to sell these types of goods. And then I will be turning over my capital to a fur merchant.”

  She toyed with the edge of his bandage. “I just want to be your wife. Tell me what I need to do to persuade you to take me away from here.”

  Edward glanced up, hearing voices coming from the other side of the hedge. “I don’t have permission to speak to you.”

  She pulled the bandage down, saw the scabbed tattoo there. A “C”? Her first initial? “Why should you need it?”

  “Our marriage is still secret from nearly everyone, right? Let us keep it that way.” He glanced at her wedding ring, uncertainty showing in his eyes.

  Before Charlotte could even react, he had walked around the hedge without so much as a backward glance, leaving her with the letters and the damp piece of linen. She wanted to scream at him, but schooled herself to patience. He had marked his skin with her initial, which had to mean something.