Shall We Dance?. Kasey Michaels

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СКАЧАТЬ had evicted clear thinking years earlier), then unlocked the drawer that held everything he knew about one William Austin…and the other one.

      He turned pages in the slim portfolio, reading yet again that Caroline had been all but physically ejected from the royal household in 1797, all but barred from her own child.

      He read again that William Austin was believed born in the first month of 1801, and later adopted by the princess. Unlike the Tories, Bernard had done his best this past year and more to locate proof of William Austin’s legitimacy, that he had not been a bastard birth. Wouldn’t that turn everything on its head! It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, a coup that would give Bernard everything he had always wanted.

      But he had found nothing that hadn’t already been discovered.

      About William Austin.

      He had, however, as he’d investigated, one by one, all the orphans Caroline had collected, been drawn to one Amelia Elizabeth Fredericks.

      Her mother supposedly perishing in childbirth, Amelia Fredericks had been brought up among the coterie of assorted waifs Caroline had accumulated, although she’d formally adopted only William Austin.

      Where better, Bernard had concluded, to hide but among a crowd? And how better to hide what must remain hidden than by allowing everyone, even steering everyone, toward another target altogether?

      The girl’s name was not at all significant. Everyone seemed to name their children after royalty, and Caroline had probably had the liberty to do the same for the supposed orphaned child. This, in itself, was not remarkable.

      Bernard turned a few more pages, until he came to the pen-and-ink reproductions he’d bought, one from a hawker here in London, one he’d paid a pretty penny for, on his own, from a contact he’d made in Italy.

      On his left, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklesburg-Strelitz, mother of the new king and for whom his only daughter had been named, both Charlottes dead and gone these past two years. A handsome woman, not beautiful, but definitely striking. Regal.

      On his right the orphan, Amelia Elizabeth Fredericks.

      And then he located the third, a rude reproduction of George Augustus Frederick, now George IV, in his flamboyant youth.

      Squinting, Bernard Nestor looked for physical resemblances and, in his mind, found them.

      AMELIA STOOD in front of the mirror in her bed chamber in the residence overlooking the Thames, her head tilted slightly to the left as she looked into the assessing eyes reflected there.

      She felt silly, the dreamer once again conjuring hopeful dreams.

      The queen had been correct in what she’d said. They looked quite unalike in their form, their figure.

      But the eyes were the same soft brown, a common enough color. The hair was the same auburn…although the queen’s had gone silver years ago, and now went blond, black and even red, depending on the woman’s whim and her choice of dye pot or wig.

      Her nose was not quite so long as the queen’s, but bore the same rather aristocratic line; her top lip more full, her cheeks and chin not quite so rounded.

      And yet, at times, during the bad times, when the queen cried into her cups, she still would cling to Amelia and call her “sweet daughter,” so that the very first thing Amelia had done upon their return to England was to send a maid off to procure a copy of Memoirs of Her Late Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Augusta.

      She’d devoured every word of the thick tome, inspected every illustration; even compared the sampling of the princess’s handwriting with her own…and she’d wept for Princess Caroline, the banished mother, now the unwanted Queen of England.

      She wasn’t at all like Charlotte, Amelia had decided, was no more or less than the grateful orphan who had been taken in, made to feel a part of the household, the way William had been, the way the others had been. But, like the others, she’d dreamed. What if the rumors were true? What if William really was the bastard son? And if not William…why not one of the others? Why not she herself?

      Amelia had been both ignored by the queen and doted upon by the queen, had been taken into the queen’s confidence on many occasions. She acted now as companion to the queen, she mothered the queen, as it were. How marvelous it would be if there was more than this lifelong connection of proximity. How marvelous if she were not an orphan, if the woman she so worried for and yet admired was her own mother.

      Stupid. Stupid, stupid, wishful dream…

      William had seen Princess Charlotte, been in her company, until her father the then Prince Regent had found out and begun the horrible campaign to completely keep the queen from her only child, removed her from her mother’s household forever by the time she was eight years old.

      Although only slightly younger than William, Amelia had never been allowed to be in the same room as Princess Charlotte. She’d only catch glimpses of her, confined to the housekeeper’s quarters until the royal heir had been denied further visits to the household. Amelia had been moved Abovestairs then, and into near-constant association with the then Princess Caroline, even as William was given shorter and shorter shrift.

      And thus the childish hopes, the childish dreams…

      The only painting Amelia had seen of Princess Charlotte had been one of Caroline, then Princess of Wales, and her infant daughter, that had traveled everywhere with them; from England, to the Continent, to Italy, to Jericho.

      And the dream had remained…

      Until the book. Until the illustrations. Any childish hope, any lingering silly, romantic dream she had still harbored that the queen could be her own mother had been dashed when she’d seen the illustrations of a grown Princess Charlotte. They were nothing alike. Not really. And William, wherever he had taken himself off to this time, was no more alike to Princess Charlotte than chalk was to cheese. William had let his dream die; and so should she.

      Ah, childish dreams. Childish hopes. Silly yearnings.

      They had no part in her life, and had to be vanquished, set aside, for she was a woman grown now, and beyond childish things.

      And she had a Responsibility to the queen, that poor, frightened, persecuted creature who had not given Amelia life, but had, in her way, watched over that life.

      Her thoughts returned to the book she had read, read again and then hidden away at the very bottom of her traveling trunk, beneath a cloak she’d long ago ceased to wear.

      What a sad story, what a heartwrenching commentary. The prince who married without love, the princess who had been exiled almost the moment she had expelled the heir from her womb. The determined campaign to show the princess in the worst of all lights, to besmirch her name, brand her a harlot, keep her from her daughter, exclude her from Society.

      Only the king, poor mad George III, had dared to champion her, but poor mad George had forgotten her, as he had forgotten the world, and now he was gone. Caroline’s sole protector from her husband’s determined campaign to destroy her no longer stood in the way of that destruction.

      If the princess—now the queen—had decided to remove herself overseas and at last live up to her terrible reputation, to enjoy life after her near imprisonment by her husband…? Well, what of it? Her only child was dead, her grandson dying СКАЧАТЬ