Shall We Dance?. Kasey Michaels

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ left, you know. Ungrateful England all but tossed him out.” She blinked back tears. “He was such a pretty boy, even with that twisted foot. I could have had him, you know, if I’d but crooked a finger in his direction. Chose Spencer Perceval instead. He was helpful, but not pretty. Sir Sydney Smith? Ah, he was almost pretty, and reportedly hung like a—”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Amelia said placidly.

      “But you know, Amelia, I only really committed adultery the once—three or six times, in truth. But that was with the husband of Maria Fitzherbert.”

      Amelia couldn’t help but smile at Her Majesty’s reference to the king’s morganatic bride. The queen’s outrageous statements, as well as her rather erratic behavior, had lost the power to embarrass her years ago. Still, she had to steer the woman back on point, even as she’d stupidly let it slip that she wished to put England behind them once and for all. “So, dear ma’am, shall I give the order? We can set sail by week’s end. Paris. Rome. Anywhere your heart desires.”

      The queen snorted. “I doubt we could make Dover on what’s left of my allowance. That hangs in the balance, you know. The king—I spit on calling him thusly—holds the purse strings now. That’s another part of this Pains-and-Penalties business. My pain, the penalties he’d order. I have to win, Amelia, or else he’ll control every aspect, every penny in my purse, every bite that goes into my mouth. He’d like nothing more than for me to live in penury.”

      “Then we stay,” Amelia said, continuing to guide her queen back toward the correct, the only, path, without letting the woman see the leash. Amelia had been against their return, but also knew they had no choice but to stay and fight now that they were here. But it had to be the queen’s decision, at the end of it.

      The queen’s sigh ended in a curse that had a lot to do with hungry mice finding a home in her estranged husband’s bowels. “Yes, we stay. We stay and we fight. Oh, Amelia.” She moaned piteously, holding out her hands so that Amelia left her seat and took those hands in her own. “I do it for you, my dearest girl. Not for me, for I am old, and ravaged, and have no future save pain until death. For you, for my dear William, for all of you. And for England! England needs me! England loves me!”

      With the queen’s many rings painfully biting into her skin, Amelia smiled and dropped into a deep curtsy. “And England thanks you, my queen.”

      “Yes, yes, of course, there’s all that drivel, too,” the queen said curtly, releasing Amelia’s abused fingers as the pendulum of her mood swung once more. “Look at that mess. For God’s sake, girl, get someone in here to clean it. Am I to live in filth as well as penury?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Amelia said, hiding a smile as she gave the bell rope a tug, then returned to gather up the official notice of the Pains and Penalties that had made for an exceedingly hysterical morning. “With Your Majesty’s permission, I shall retire to the kitchens to personally order strawberry tarts for tea. Your favorite, ma’am.”

      The queen was suddenly girlish, her cheeks coloring even beneath the spots of rouge, her smile shy. “I really shouldn’t indulge, not when I must prepare to meet my subjects. I needs must look my best.”

      “You are always at your best, ma’am, and dear in the hearts of everyone,” Amelia said, knowing the words sounded old and worn but unable to think of new ones, and the queen waved her away, toward the kitchens.

      BERNARD NESTOR sat at the rude table in his ruder kitchen, devoid now of even the single servant he’d had to turn off, and studied the copy of the Bill of Pains and Penalties he’d stuffed into his coat just after Henry Brougham had given him his congé and told him never to darken his door again.

      Gratitude. There was none in this cruel and unenlightened world. He’d been a loyal Whig, a loyal employee of Henry Brougham’s, a diligent worker.

      And what had he gotten for this devotion?

      He’d gotten the sack, that’s what he’d gotten.

      Too rabid. Too rigid. Too intense. Too much of a danger when clear heads, not hotheads, are needed. That’s what Henry Brougham had said.

      Five years. He’d worked, slaved, and with little financial remuneration, for five long years, monitoring Princess Caroline’s movements, warning Henry Brougham in time to head off at least a half-dozen disasters as the woman made a fool of herself across the continent.

      And now, now when the queen really needed him, he’d been cast aside as too fervent, too volatile, too dangerous.

      England needed their new queen. England needed the Whigs back in power. England would become another France, with its own bloody revolution, if the king and those damn Tories were left to their own devices.

      The world was black or white to Bernard, right or wrong, innocent or guilty and with no shades of gray. The world was reasonable this way for Bernard, and it was so much easier to tell the Good from the Bad without having to invest in any heavy thinking.

      He stared at the rather dirty tumbler of inferior wine that was all the penny-pinched younger son could afford before his hand shot out, sweeping the thick glass off the table, only to have the thing thunk against the floor-boards; not even giving him the solace of smashing into a thousand pieces.

      Fools! They were all fools! Didn’t they know how much danger the queen was in, the Whigs were in, now that this damned Pains-and-Penalties nonsense was fact?

      He grabbed at the pages, glaring at the crabbed, hurried writing, as he’d had to take Henry Brougham’s copy into a dark closet with only one candle to aid him as he’d copied it, word for damning word.

      He found what he was looking for and read the words aloud:

      “…to deprive Her Majesty, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, of the Title, Prerogatives, Rights, Privileges and Exemptions of Queen Consort of this Realm; and to dissolve the Marriage between His Majesty and said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth.”

      Bernard picked up the wine bottle by the neck and drank deeply. “Treason. Blasphemy.” He frowned, then decided he was right. Yes. Even blasphemy, if he sort of tipped his head and squinted as he looked at the thing. “But how to stop it? God knows the wretched woman is guilty of every charge against her, and more.”

      And Bernard knew, because it had been Bernard’s job to know.

      Pergami. Bartolomeo Bergami, now Pergami; now even—courtesy of the then Princess Caroline—Knight of Malta, Baron de la Francine. There was one for the books: the upstart Italian paramour, elevated to such a station by reason of what could only be assumed was his talented cock. For the privilege of servicing a loud, overblown, ridiculous creature, he had been given money, titles, position…and a deep gravy boat for all his relatives to swim in as part of Caroline’s entourage.

      The Tories would destroy her, through Pergami. The pains would be clear, the penalties clearer.

      And England, under the Tories, would go down in the annals of history as one very large failure.

      Unless…unless he, Bernard Nestor, was right, and he was always right. For, in The World as Seen by Bernard Nestor, he was forever cast in the leading role, that of hero, savior. Why, when he thought of himself that way, he even thought of himself as being taller, wider. With a chin.

      He pushed himself away from the table and staggered, rather drunkenly, to the locked desk in his small sitting room. He shook СКАЧАТЬ