Mary Perry - The Wild Princess: A Novel of Queen Victoria’s Defiant Daughter

Louise lay still, pressing her face to the coal-blackened boards, one arm over her head as her only protection. She barely had the strength to breathe. She hurt everywhere. Maybe, after all, she should have thrown herself in instead of the coal.

“Fuck!” She recognized the younger man’s voice.

“What?”

“Looky there.”

Louise had no idea what had caught their attention. She was just grateful something had distracted them from beating her. She peered up around her arm.

“He’s following us. Coming up fast,” the one called Rupert said. He exploded in a fit of cursing. “Must’ve seen us pick her up.”

To Louise it seemed as if a lifetime had passed since they’d dragged her out of the river, but now she realized it had probably been only minutes.

The two men totally ignored her. They started throwing as much coal as they could retrieve from the deck, and the little left in the tinderbox, into the boiler. The boat had been traveling at a modest pace but suddenly, with the added fuel, it lurched forward at the younger man’s prompt from the throttle.

Louise pushed herself up, sitting with her back pressed against the boat’s low gunwales for support. Her dress clung to her thighs and calves—a muddy, snarled mess. She grasped handfuls of ruined satin faille and crepe de chine at her waist, tearing away layer after layer of fabric as she focused on the following boat. It looked like a workboat of sorts with its high, padded prow. Although it was gaining on them, she feared the boat she was on might reach a dock before they could catch up.

At first the following boat had been too far away for her to make out who might be on it. But now she saw two heads at the helm, and two more figures on the bow.

One wore a white shirt, blousing in the wind. The man’s black hair streamed back from his face as the boat sped toward her. Tears came to her eyes.

Stephen.

He’d braced his feet wide to keep himself from being thrown to the deck as the boat jounced and banged into the tidal waves. He was looking directly toward her. Stephen was coming for her. Tears filled her eyes.

Behind her, she could hear the two Fenians arguing. She looked over her shoulder. There was almost no coal left on the deck.

“Open her up, Will. Open the god-damn throttle!”

“No.” The younger man pushed his partner away from the boiler and jabbed a finger at the gauges. “You see that? Pressure’s too high. Safety gauge has shut her down.”

Rupert grabbed the younger man by the front of his shirt and yelled in his face. “You let that engine stop, and I’ll kill you, boy.”

As Louise held her breath and watched, Will looked at the fire, then at his partner. “All right. Dump the last of the coal in. I’ll override the safety.” He removed the kerchief from around his throat and used it to tie down a lever on the face of the engine so that it couldn’t move. “Old racing trick,” he mumbled, looking nervous.

Louise glanced back at Byrne’s boat. It was lagging behind while the boat she was on thrust forward ever more powerfully. The hope she’d felt moments earlier died.

And then she heard a loud hissing noise.

She remembered Lorne telling her about a steam engine disaster on the Manchester train line. Trains and ships had the same problems with faulty pressure gauges, or with engineers who ignored them. When the pressure built too high, the engine could explode.

Louise heard someone shouting at her and looked up to see Stephen hanging off the bow of the trailing boat, waving and shouting at her. “Jump! Jump!”

She looked back at the two men. Rupert was reaching for the boat hook even as she pulled herself to standing at the cost of wrenching pain in her shoulder. Eyeing her with murderous intent, he lurched toward her. She hobbled to a spot as far behind the churning paddle wheels as she could, and threw herself over the side and into the river.

Byrne saw Louise go in . . . and under. She looked as weak as a baby bird spilling from its nest. He signaled the captain to cut his engines. Tying a line to his waist, he dove into the murky water, aiming for the place he’d seen her go down. Did she even know how to swim?

When he surfaced he bobbed in one place, treading water, looking around him for the slightest disturbance in the water’s surface. But it was so full of floating garbage he despaired of finding her. Then he heard a sharp, high-pitched cry. He turned.

Louise was not twenty feet behind him, coughing and wheezing for air. He swam to her—pushing aside half of a balsa crate, a green glass bottle. His arms closed around her. She clung to him but didn’t struggle as the drowning often did. She laid her head against his shoulder and opened her eyes wider at the sudden percussion of an explosion less than a hundred yards downriver.

“It’s over,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m here. You’re safe, my love.”

Osborne House, 24 January 1901

Louise laid down the gold Montblanc fountain pen. There. She’d written all through the night to finish her story.

She turned to observe the shockingly high pile of vellum pages that had grown beneath her pen. Well, she could have told Eddie more. But it was all that a boy, now a grown man, needed to know of his two mothers and how he’d come into the world. She hadn’t told him of her life in Canada. Neither had she shared news of her long visits in Bermuda, or the months at spas on the Continent, where she retreated with her lover whenever she could. Those were the happiest times of her life—more romantic, in many ways, than a traditional marriage. Stephen was true to his word. He always found her. And when they were together their love filled whatever room they shared. The rest of the world simply dissolved into inconsequential mist.

When Stephen was away from her he wrote her long letters describing his adventures, his assignments with the RCMP and, later, with his new employer, the American Secret Service. She read each letter exactly three times then burned it. What they shared was far too precious to expose to historians, gossip columnists, or even her son. Edward Locock would have become the next Duke of Argyll had she been able to acknowledge him publicly, for she and Lorne never did consummate their marriage, and therefore never had a child of their own.

She hoped her son was content with his life as it stood. He had taken up his adoptive father’s profession and was now a fine surgeon. Amanda’s talent for writing had rubbed off on him too. He wrote articles that were published in highly acclaimed medical journals.

No mother could have been prouder.

Louise sealed the thick envelope, using the same perfumed wax she affixed to each of Stephen Byrne’s letters, stamping it with the Duchess of Argyll’s seal. It somehow seemed right that her mother’s life had ended here at Osborne House, where little Eddie’s life began, despite the queen’s plans.

She sighed, holding that thought for a moment before a soft knock sounded on her door. Lady Car peeked around the edge. “Princess, you have a caller.” Her lady-in-waiting’s impish smile told her she’d be pleased. Bertie had arrived last night, along with Alix and the children. The Prince of Wales was now officially King George IV, and his princess had become Queen Alexandra. But Louise suspected her guest was neither of them.

She nodded for Car to allow her visitor to enter. “How did you get here so quickly?” she said when Stephen Byrne walked in and took her hands in his. She observed the subtle changes in his face, hair, clothing since they’d last been together. He seemed stronger and more handsome with each year, and here they were into the fifth decade of their lives, yet still lovers, still crossing oceans to be with each other for whatever time fate allowed.

“Beatrice telegraphed that your mother was likely not to last the month. I booked passage the next day.” Byrne took her in his arms and kissed the top of her hair, her forehead, her lips, then looked into her tear-filled eyes. “I wanted to be with you. I’m sorry I was too late.”

“It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t have been allowed into her room at the end. Bertie stood guard over her. But how did you know we’d be here on the Isle of Wight and not in London?”

He shook his head and smiled. “I told you I’d always find you, didn’t I?”

“You did. And you have kept your promise, my love.”

He glanced down at her escritoire, the open inkwell, the sealed envelope fat with pages, then back to her. “You’ve told Edward then. All of it?”

“As much as he needs to know, yes.” She nodded. “I hope he will not think me evil . . . for my deceptions.”

“He’ll realize how much you’ve sacrificed for him. He’ll love his godmother all the more, knowing her as the woman who gave birth to him.”

He wrapped her in his arms and held her close as Victoria’s mourners continued to arrive by carriage, coach, and horseback. A new refrain echoed through Osborne House, and indeed, throughout the Empire: “God save the king.”

The Incident at Vauxhall Bridge, as it came to be known at Scotland Yard, was hushed up by orders of the prime minister to minimize any positive press for the Fenians. All the public ever learned was that radicals managed to blow up a bridge and by doing so delayed the queen’s arrival at the church. The two dynamiteers responsible, reported the London Times, were so inept that they managed to blow themselves up in the boat they’d used to plant the bomb. Happily, the press noted, other members of the queen’s family who had planned to travel along the parade route had been ill and, unable to attend the ceremony, were out of harm’s way.