A Royal Kiss and Tell

Ladies, if your husband is experiencing lethargy and an unwillingness to work, a teaspoon of licorice root to one’s tea is guaranteed to restore vitality. Carsons’ Licorice Root is available in measured doses for the unsuspecting husband.

—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and

Domesticity for Ladies

CAROLINE CRIED HERSELF to sleep and into the night between tears and sleeping. On the following day, she was dragged awake by the sudden streaming of sun in through her windows. She threw an arm over her eyes and moaned. “What time is it?”

“One o’clock,” Martha said from somewhere across the room.

Caroline opened her eyes. They were swollen from sobbing, and her head felt as if it were caught in a vise. She slowly pushed herself up, and a curtain of hair shielded her view of Martha. “The most terrible thing happened last night, Martha.”

Martha didn’t speak at first. Caroline squeezed her eyes shut then pushed her hair aside and looked at her lady’s maid.

Martha gave her a piteous look. “I heard, madam. Another maid has gone missing, and the tale of how she went missing was quick to spread. They say it’s a love triangle.”

“A love triangle?”

Martha glanced away. “You, the prince, and the maid.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Caroline whispered. “I’m ruined, aren’t I?”

Martha didn’t dispute her. She sat next to her on the bed and put her arm around her shoulders as she’d done many times through the years. “Don’t fret, milady. His lordship will make it better.”

But Beck didn’t make it better. He couldn’t make it better, no matter how he might have wanted to. If he wanted to. He summoned her to his study later that afternoon. He looked older to her somehow. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, and the lines around them were more pronounced than she’d ever noticed before. She stood meekly before him, her arms wrapped around her body, equal parts ashamed and tired and defiant.

Beck sighed. “What am I to do, Caro? What, pray tell? Your reputation is in tatters. I went round to the club this morning and everyone had heard what happened at the Farringtons’.”

A shaft of light broke through the clouds and landed between brother and sister, like some sort of invisible barrier.

Caroline felt as if she’d climbed mountains. Her legs and arms felt wobbly. She sank onto a settee. “I was trying to help.”

“By seducing him? That’s what they will say, you know. The fault always is assigned to the female in these situations.”

“I didn’t seduce him. It wasn’t like that.”

Beck came around from his desk and pulled a chair up to sit before her. “Then what was it like? Tell me, Caro. Help me to understand.”

Caroline didn’t have the strength to spare Beck any detail. She told him everything—about the Weslorian girls and the terrible thing that had happened to them, and how Leopold was doing his best to save them. She confessed she’d fallen in love with Leopold, and that it wasn’t infatuation but true love, and he had come to feel the same for her. She told Beck that last night, when it looked as if Leopold would be caught and the girl sent off to her rooms and to God knew what sort of punishment, she’d done the only thing she could think of in the moment and created another scandal to cover the one blooming in that study.

When she had finished, Beck understood. He had softened considerably. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin as he looked at the window. “Why didn’t you tell this to Mr. Drummond when he called?”

“I didn’t know if I could trust him, and I wouldn’t do anything to harm Leopold.”

Beck spread his fingers wide on his knees. “Well, then. You’ll have to go away from London for a time.”

“Why? I won’t go out, I promise.”

“Caro...don’t you understand? I won’t allow to happen to you what happened to Eliza. This society you love so much is like a rabid dog. They will turn on you and pillory you at the slightest opportunity. You and Martha will go to our country home in Bibury, and hopefully, with the passage of time, the talk will ease.”

Her chest constricted painfully. She couldn’t imagine living in the country indefinitely. What would she do? How would she survive without friends? What about her dresses and her plans to open a dress shop? What about suppers and balls and gentlemen callers, all threads in the tapestry of her life? Who was she without those things? “But...but what of Leopold?”