The Princess Dilemma: A Victorian Royal Romance Read online

  “Resourceful, Quintin. I do appreciate your skills in that regard.”

  “Any luck, sir? With the Palace?”

  “I have an audience, but it is going to be a long wait for it.”

  “Can you afford the rent?”

  “I shall apply to my aunt before it comes to that. I can accept being poor, no amusement, eating sparingly, that sort of thing. But I won’t sleep under a bridge.”

  “Bloody shame, sir, you being treated like this, and the son of a prince.”

  “It’s the price of my mother’s foolishness. I can’t imagine what she was thinking.”

  “Not much thinking goes on between the sheets.”

  There was that. It was said that after Prince Edward deserted his mother the first time, she took up with a Catholic man, who led her to the conversion. “You are a philosopher,” Edward said. “How about a cup of tea? I could read these chapters aloud for us both to enjoy?”

  Quintin’s cheeks creased into a fan of wrinkles. “Very good, sir.”

  As the elderly servant toddled away, Edward folded his letter to the lady and put it aside to be mailed on Monday. He quickly penned another letter to his aunt, expressing his delight at seeing her again. Perhaps she would invite him around for a proper tea if he reminded her of his presence in town.

  On Monday, he would stop in at the bookshop and see what Lemuel suggested for gambling houses. Spencer had taught him a few tricks. Time to see if he could cadge a few pounds off of London’s gamblers.

  Chapter Three

  Lemuel had directed Edward back to his very own street, to an establishment over a bootmaker’s shop, for vingt-et-un, the game Edward knew best, and the one his brother Spencer said was easiest to actually win. The gambling-house, Trumbull’s, was not only a hell, but a brothel as well. Lemuel had been very sour when he explained all this to him, but there was a gleam in his eyes that made Edward think he was desperate to come along.

  However, not just anyone was allowed into these places. One must look the part. Edward told the lad he would investigate first and invite him another time.

  The place was just a five-minute walk from his rooms, he discovered. He went up a flight of narrow stairs and pulled a polished bell. The man who opened the door nodded and admitted him into a small antechamber. As he closed the door behind him Edward noticed a second door, covered with sound-muffling fabric. A small window had been cut into the door and another man peered at him. Edward forced himself to remain still as he was approved.

  A flight of richly carpeted steps lay behind that door. His footsteps were muffled as he went up the stairs, the sound of men’s voices and glasses clinking growing louder as he reached the upper floor. The smell of a particularly foul cigar drifted down, tickling his nose.

  Spencer had told him to watch out for “bonnets,” men who were employed by such places to drum up play. Edward suspected in this house the bigger danger was women. While Lemuel had said the play here was fair, having a prostitute in a low-cut dress draped over one’s arm did tend to stimulate play, if not elevate the discourse.

  He heard the shrill laugh of one such woman, dressed in an eye-watering orange and purple silk dress, as she leaned over a late middle-aged man-about-town, his gut straining at his waistcoat.

  The back wall held the vingt-et-un table just before the next room, where a cold buffet had been set out along with a wide variety of bottles. Edward hadn’t expected the free comestibles, but the liquors made sense. A woman, older than the girls plying the room and dressed in black, appeared at his elbow with a tray.

  “Champagne, sir?” she asked.

  He took a glass from her with a nod of thanks, then went to test his luck at the table. The dealer looked him over then nodded.

  “Betting starts at five shillings,” he said.

  Edward pulled coins from his pocket, then sat next to a thin man with a stained cravat, who didn’t even glance up from his cards. Edward went bust on the first two hands, at first ignoring Spencer’s rules for stopping at seventeen, but then became more sensible as his coins vanished into the dealer’s box.

  He was ahead two pounds when the dealer dealt a pair of aces to him. Glancing up after he split them, he saw a tall man in a new evening suit, his eyes faintly creased around the corners. After a moment’s study, Edward realized he knew the man, mostly because his shock of carrot hair had not dimmed with encroaching middle age. His cousin, Murdo Ogilvy.

  “Sir?” the dealer said.

  Edward gestured to the cards. The dealer took his shillings and dropped a card on top of each ace. He had been seated long enough for one of the lightskirts to notice him. A pretty dark-haired girl who was missing her left incisor leaned over him, breathing cheap wine fumes into his face. He brushed her off and looked at his cards. A jack on one, a seven on the other. He shook his head at the dealer.

  The thin man next to him shook his head. “Busted.” He tipped back his champagne glass and emptied it. Judging from the number of coins in front of him the man would be fine for another hour, even if luck had turned against him.

  The dealer went bust and Edward took his earnings with a nod.

  “Is that Edward?” Murdo still had a distinctly Scottish burr to his voice. He was the product of a Scottish boarding school and had never been educated in England. Their grandfather had kept this bastard close, while sending Lady Margot’s children into the military without so much as a sentimental tear. Perhaps he should have known he and his brothers would never receive a farthing in the will.

  Edward swept up the rest of his money and tucked it away, glad he had made a profit, and took his half-empty champagne glass in hand. “In the flesh.”

  Murdo took his hand and shook it heartily. “Sold your commission? Can ye do that?”

  “I’m on leave. Wanted to see my mother, but arrived too late.” He shrugged. “Now I’m here to transact some business.”

  “I am sorry about Aunt Margot.” Murdo glanced around with a frown, then gestured toward the refreshment room. They walked in together, taking plates from another woman dressed in black.

  Here the prostitutes were represented in force. It was no place to hold a private conversation, but Edward was not about to turn down good meat. He gladly accepted a slice of a hefty joint, a steaming potato, and a hunk of good cheese.

  “Miss dinner?” Murdo said, merely refreshing his glass of brandy. “Deep into play?”

  Edward checked his pocket watch. He’d already been here over an hour. Time seemed to have no meaning in such a place. The windows were completely covered in heavy drapes, even in the summer, so there was no way to check the sky.

  “Deeper than I thought,” he admitted. “When the cards are going well…”

  “I thought that was Spencer’s pastime, not yours. Ye are the reader, correct?”

  Edward cut into his meat and took a large mouthful. He closed his eyes in pleasure. Best bite of food he’d had since leaving Canada.

  Murdo smiled. “Or do I have it wrong? Ye are the eater?”

  “Good meat,” he said. “I have more varied interests than my brothers. I do read. Working my way through ‘Pickwick Papers’ now.”

  “Are ye? I believe I have last year’s bound edition,” Murdo said, sipping his brandy. “I should read it so we can compare notes.”

  Edward visualized himself grabbing his cousin by the scruff and shaking the bound edition out of him, but merely sliced into the cheese. “You should read it. I also like to box.”

  “An eye for the ladies, too, if I’ve heard correctly. Something about a general’s daughter? A wee bit of disgrace?”

  “I was all of seventeen at the time,” Edward said, taking his first bite of buttery potato. He had not had a good meal since leaving Canada. “And attempting to forget another young lady. Both have long since vanished from my memory. My career has recovered, and the general’s daughter in question has three children. She’s also on her third husband, but that is another story.”

 
“Ye’ll have to come to my club and tell it. Brook’s, ye know. Deep gaming there, if ye’d like.”

  Their grandfather’s club, nothing he’d ever belong to, if circumstances didn’t go his way. With Lord Melbourne’s influence on the queen, Whigs were in ascendance, as indeed they had been for most of these past three years since Melbourne had been prime minister. Brook’s was the place to be. Even Melbourne was a member.

  Edward leaned back in his chair and struck a casual pose. “I would be happy to be introduced there, though I am not really a gambler.”

  “I can tell. Ye played vingt-et-un. Obviously ye are a cautious man, attempting to earn money.” Murdo grinned and snatched a piece of the skin from Edward’s potato.

  Edward’s eyes narrowed as a flash of boyhood memory came to him. Murdo, two years older and once much larger, careening through a carefully laid out game of marbles. Murdo, grabbing handfuls of his best skipping rocks at the stream behind Linsee Castle, and tossing them into the center of the fast-moving water, where none of the boys were allowed to go.

  Edward blinked. Surely Murdo had improved with age. He’d had nine years to mature. “Found a wife yet, Murdo? Must sort out your inheritors.”

  Murdo took another length of skin from Edward’s plate. “Why? Afraid my will has ye set to inherit? I’d better draft a letter to my solicitors and inform them if I’m murdered they’d better look to ye first.”

  “I do know how to kill,” Edward said evenly, without changing his expression. In fact, he could do so with the fork in his hand.

  Murdo laughed. “Ye do have a killer way about you. Don’t remember it from before. I used to have the upper hand, as I recall. Thought I’d toughened up further at school, but I suppose the army did the trick for ye.”

  “Indeed. So no wifely prospects?”

  “Not as such. Why, the word about my inheritance is hardly out, ye ken. Ladies will swarm me any day now.” He ran his tongue over his upper lip.

  “I’d always heard horror stories about matchmaking mamas. I can’t imagine they don’t know about you.”

  “I didn’t get the title, after all.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Edward cut through his meat with his knife. “Get a plate for yourself, soak up all that alcohol, and I’ll tell you about a woman I’m trying to learn more about at the moment.”

  “Someone in London? Did ye come here to court?”

  “Of course not. My pockets are to let, as you must know.”

  “Yes, I had realized it. Well, I suppose ye have the right of it. That joint did look nice. Back in a moment.” Murdo left his seat, carrying his empty brandy glass.

  Edward watched his cousin. The glass was refilled before Murdo took a plate for his meat and a potato. Did he always drink like this, or was he nervous? What was he doing on Jermyn Street when he could be gambling at Brook’s?

  Murdo’s hand trembled slightly as he set his plate on the table across from Edward, drank from his glass, then took up his cutlery. “A woman, you say? Mistress prospect? Rich, I hope.”

  “Unlikely in either case. A lady-in-waiting to Victoria.”

  “Good family then. Does the average aristocratic soul know who your father was?”

  “I couldn’t say. They know my story in the army and at court. Linsee never kept it a secret.”

  “Did you know Prince Edward? I don’t remember.”

  “My father died when I was nine. I have early memories of his relationship with my mother, but not so much after that. Linsee brought me down to London once after Victoria was born.”

  “So he took you to Kensington Palace?”

  “I suppose so. That must have been when it was decided we would all go into the army, my brothers and I.”

  “Did your father buy your commissions?”

  “I’d always been led to believe my grandfather did.”

  “The money might have gone to education otherwise. But ye were all such martial boys. The army made sense, even though you went so early, after our misadventure.”

  Edward narrowed his eyes. “Ought to have made sense for you too. You were rougher than any of us.”

  Murdo chewed on the corner of his lower lip. “Some of us change. I don’t imagine any of ye three have, though.”

  “Your life is very different than it might have been.” Edward was getting restless.

  “Indeed. Ye ought to have shared in the inheritance. Maybe Linsee expected something different to happen.”

  “Then why were we sent off to Canada?”

  “Ye were sent out of the country because of your wife,” Murdo said in a bland tone.

  Nonetheless, a muscle in Edward’s jaw twitched. He frowned. “What? I do not have a wife.”

  “Of course ye do, assuming she is still alive. I witnessed your vows.”

  Edward cleared his throat. A sense of unease tickled his spine. A bridge came distantly to mind, a freckle-faced blond girl holding his hands, giggling, while Murdo lounged on the grass on the bank nearby. “Do you mean Charlie? She was what, fourteen at the time?”

  “It was still a legal marriage,” Murdo said with a pious air. “Ye were eager enough to bed her, don’t ye remember? A stripling of sixteen, ye were.”

  Edward frowned. A sweet, virginal kiss on the bridge, an empty promise. He rubbed his forehead, trying to bring back more. She had worn a brown dress with a lace collar. Surely not wedding attire? “It could not have been legal. She was a princess of somewhere unimportant.”

  “It was legal. I’d swear to it.” Murdo clapped him on the shoulder then took a bite of his meat. “But I had an attack of conscience for the wee girl and went to the duke. He sent your mother for Charlie and she took the girl away. The next thing I knew, Linsee had hauled ye off to London and I never saw ye again. Spencer was gone a year later, then James a couple of years after that.”

  Edward shrugged and forked up his last bite of meat. “Why don’t I remember it better? I thought I’d been sent off because I tried to have carnal relations with a German princess, not because I’d married her.”

  “Blind, stinking drunk ye were. We all were a bit light in our boots, ye ken, when ye and Charlie said the words, holding hands over the water and all that, but then ye downed an entire bottle of wine after your mother took her away.”

  “Charlie was German, right? Beautiful eyes, I remember.” Edward closed his eyes. Was he confusing that fourteen-year-old girl with Victoria’s lady-in-waiting?

  “Princess Charlotte of Scharnburg, as I recall,” Murdo said. “Scharnburg’s castle and lands are no grander than the Linsee holdings, but she was a real princess. I remember ye moaning over her.”

  Oh dear God.

  Edward grabbed Murdo’s glass and tossed back the fiery spirits.

  “What did ye do that for?” His cousin demanded.

  “She’s here in London,” The liquor had made his voice hoarse. He’d matched the girl to the woman. “My wife. She’s beautiful. And still poor.”

  “I won’t turn ye out of my house if ye want to reside with me while you are in London. Apparently she won’t be bringing any money into your alliance.” Murdo smirked. “Where are ye living now?”

  “Here on this street. I have rooms. But you don’t understand. She doesn’t live with me.”

  “Not much coin for those rooms, I expect, what with you gambling for shillings. Can’t afford a wife. Where does she live?”

  “I will be fine. And so will she. She lives with Victoria. She’s a lady-in-waiting. I expect she recognized me and I had no idea who she was.”

  Murdo shrugged. “Women,” he commented. “Ye will have to make it right, unless ye can find the coin to divorce her.”

  “You are the only one who knows now, with my mother and grandfather dead.” Edward’s voice was terse. Why was it so easy for him to take offense with his cousin? He wished for his own brandy glass. He might as well get one; it was free. He stood up and snagged a glass of h
is own, spilling slightly as he poured two fingers’ worth. Were his hands shaking too? Maybe he was as nervous as Murdo.

  When he sat down with two fresh glasses, Murdo took one and rolled it between his hands. “Ye married under God, even if ye were not in a church. I cannot in good conscience pretend I didn’t witness it. Ye have to make this right, Edward.”

  “I cannot worry about this right now. Hell, I can scarcely feed myself or my servant.”

  “There’s no shame to admitting ye are poor. Your mother had no money of her own and considerable expense was put to buying your commission. But everyone knows ye need additional funds to support a military career.”

  “Therefore it is lucky that Spencer is good at cards and James is good with women. Me, I’m supposed to have the power to persuade men to follow my dreams. Yet now I’m saddled with a wife? No, I cannot be bothered with a stranger for a wife.”

  Murdo rolled his eyes. “Ye aren’t legitimate, cousin, no more than I am. And just like your father made his marital decisions, so did ye. Ye have to deal with the consequences.”

  Edward shook his head. “Don’t be too sure. My father could put my mother aside because he didn’t have permission to marry, right? That is what was said?”

  “And she was Catholic.”

  “But not until after he put her aside. My father knew she wasn’t Catholic when they wed. I’ve seen her baptismal certificate. We’ve been told a lie.”

  “But the permission?”

  “I have a letter from King George III.”

  Murdo’s ginger eyebrows lifted. “It cannot be real, cousin. Auld Georgie was mad. Besides, I’m sure there is more to it than that. Government officials, that sort of thing.”

  Edward sighed. “I don’t know. I need someone to compare the letter to a confirmed one of the king’s. Why I thought I could do this on my own I don’t know.”

  “I will pay for ye to consult the family solicitors,” Murdo offered. “They can put your documents in the right hands. If Charlie is at court, she can help you too. Ye say ye think she knows ye. It’s time to take custody of your wife.”