Tears pooled in Louise’s eyes, blurring the room around her. “Please, please don’t take him from me.”

She could hear them talking in hushed voices on the far side of the room. Water was being poured, she imagined to clean away the birth blood. A lusty cry broke the silence as the babe took his first breath. Her heart sang. Her son was alive.

But before she could reach for him, there came a sudden splashing sound, and the cry stopped.

“No!” Louise shrieked.

“What are you doing?” The doctor’s voice. “Not here, woman. Get it out of the room!”

And then she knew for certain, there was no village couple.

“Stop!” Louise pushed herself up on one arm despite the searing pain the slightest movement caused. To her relief, the woman had stepped back from the tub of water with the writhing, wet infant in her hands. “If you harm that baby . . . if you take one step out of this room with him,” Louise vowed, “I shall tell the world you have murdered the grandchild of Queen Victoria.”

The doctor and his wife exchanged worried glances.

Locock took a step toward her. “Princess. Please, let us take care of this complication for you. The scandal would kill your poor mother.”

Nothing on God’s green earth has the power to kill that woman, she thought. Nothing. She’ll die when she’s good and ready.

“Give me the baby,” Louise commanded.

Neither of them moved. But the wrinkled pink newborn, lying like a pagan offering, still unswaddled in the woman’s open hands, suddenly began flailing and wailing furiously. He was probably just cold. Louise knew that. But to her ears, there had never been a more beautiful sound. Her son was calling to her.

“Go! For godsakes get out of here!” the doctor shouted. “She’s bluffing.”

The doctor’s wife looked down at the baby in her hands then at Louise. There was a flash of pity in the older woman’s eyes.

“If you kill my child,” Louise warned, her voice crackling with white-hot rage, “I swear to you, I will go to the police, but first I will tell every newspaper in London what you have done. You will both be charged with murder and found guilty, because my mother will deny knowledge of your wicked deed. She will protect the Crown, while all of England calls you monsters and applauds your execution.”

As if launched by a spring, the doctor’s wife rushed toward the bed and nearly tossed the squalling infant at its mother. Louise tenderly rested the babe across her belly and pulled the bloodstained linens up over them both for a bit of warmth.

“In the morning, you will see things differently,” Locock said, his eyes grim, lips tucked in tight. “You will realize you have no choice but to—”

“There are always choices,” Louise said, giving in to her exhaustion and closing her eyes as she cradled the baby to her body. “Go. Leave us.”

That night, as tired as Louise was, she forced herself to stay awake. A few hours later, the doctor’s wife slipped into the room. Before Louise could warn her off, the woman pressed a finger over her lips. “Hush, Your Highness, I won’t hurt you or the child. I’ve brought clean sheets and blankets for you. Let me wash you and check to make sure you’re not hemorrhaging.”

The woman was efficient and gentle, but so silent in her ministrations that Louise knew she had come without her husband’s knowledge.

“Thank you,” Louise whispered.

“I have a son too,” the woman said, her eyes kind. “A fine grown son. You fought for your babe’s life tonight. I would have done the same.”

Thirty-three

Stafford House, London, 1871

Louise shifted away from Byrne’s chest just enough to look up into his face, needing him to see her eyes and know that every word she’d confessed to him was the absolute truth.

“When Locock came into my room the next morning, he tried once more to convince me I was being foolish. I assured him if he killed my baby, he’d have to kill me to keep me quiet.”

Byrne was staring at her with an expression of such wonder that she knew he hadn’t guessed this part. She thought she saw a subtle brightening in his gaze, and relief.

“Aren’t you going to ask where the child is now?”

“I’m pretty sure I know.”

She smiled. Yes, she supposed he did. “By morning I’d come up with a plan.”

“And that plan involved a young woman who scrubbed floors at the art school where you’d met Donovan?”

“Yes. I sent a carriage for Amanda. Then I told Locock to summon his son. Henry was a medical student, soon to complete his studies. I’d met him at parties with my artist friends and liked him. He seemed generous of spirit, gentle, wise beyond his years. When they both arrived I introduced them to each other and made them a proposition. I offered a generous portion of my dowry to set them up in a nice house in a respectable part of the city—if they would marry and take my baby as their own. Amanda would never have to scrub another stoop, and Henry could open his practice years earlier than if he were struggling on his own or dependent upon his penny-pincher of a father. All they needed to do was provide a safe and loving home for my little Edward. And allow me to spend time with him whenever I could.”

Byrne closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, as though to cleanse away the wickedness of his accusations. “I’m sorry I thought for even a moment that you might have—” He shook his head. “This is a much happier tale than I’d imagined. You were terribly brave.” He touched her cheek with rough fingertips. “You stood up to your mother and—”

“And acted just as she would have done.” Louise didn’t try to hide her bitterness. “I ordered people around, forcing them to alter their lives to suit me.”

“No. You saved an innocent life and brought two people together who seem very happy with the marriage you arranged for them.”

Louise had to agree with that at least. Although she’d often felt guilty for bullying Amanda and Henry into a marriage every bit as contrived as her own to Lorne, she had watched them fall in love during the years they were raising her son as their own. “I’ve just learned that Amanda is expecting a child of her own. Henry is as proud as a man can be.”

“So there,” Byrne whispered. “Fate put you in an impossible situation, but you did the very best anyone could. Your son is a healthy, happy boy, due to your courage.”

“But he’ll never know I’m his real mother.” That alone broke her heart.

“There may come a time when you can reveal the truth to him.”

She looked up at Byrne, seeing something new and unexpected in the man. Beneath the facade of a rogue was an intelligent and sincere man. A man of moral strength.

“Why did you put me through this ordeal?” she said, pressing her palms to his chest to move a little away but not quite out of his embrace.

“Because you needed to heal. I told you that.”

“No, I mean, why do you care? You, personally. About me.”

He tipped his head to one side and smiled. “Because I just do.” She watched as he lowered his head, knowing what he was about to do. He kissed her on the lips, long and thoroughly.

Already weak from her emotional outpouring, Louise dissolved at the soft pressure of his mouth over hers. She lingered, enjoying the moment, then sighed. “No one in my family cared enough to face the truth. No one,” she said. “It’s a forbidden topic. My fall from grace.”

The tenderness in his gaze shifted almost imperceptibly to something with more sizzle.

“Mr. Byrne?”

“My Christian name is Stephen,” he reminded her.

This would take some getting used to. “Stephen. I understand you’re a compassionate man. Comforting me and being my confidant is one thing, but . . . I need to know what you’re thinking. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, well—” He lowered his lips to her throat and kissed her once, twice, thrice in a descending pattern to the top edge of her bodice. “I’m just trying to convince myself not to throw you down on this stone floor and make love to you.”

She reached up and placed her palms on either side of his face to make him look up from her breasts and into her eyes. “That would be a very ungentlemanly thing to do.”

“I suppose so. But then—”

“—you’re not a gentleman.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat and released her, as if the simple action of opening his arms required as much strength as lifting a smoldering timber off of Amanda. “But if you stay out here another five minutes with me, your reputation will be shot to hell.”

She smiled. “I suppose so.”

He took her by the hand. “Back to the ball, Princess.”

Thirty-four

In the days following Louise’s encounter with Stephen Byrne at Stafford House, Louise found it a challenge to think of anything but him. His strong arms holding her. The scents of leather and earth that seemed always to cling to him even when he was indoors. His eyes, as black as the onyx stone in the signet ring her father had left to her. In her dreams, he kissed her again, and again. Each time demanding more from her.

Louise’s only defense for shutting out these fantasies, and others far too vivid and intimate to even think about, was by keeping very, very busy. She decided the necessary distractions should come in the form of helping the American investigate the rat incident. While he was in pursuit of Darvey, she would lessen his load by doing a little sleuthing at Buckingham.

The first step, she decided, was to confer with her mother, a task she looked forward to with even less enthusiasm than usual, so soon after revisiting the most traumatic days of her young life.