The Wild Princess: A Novel of Queen Victoria's Defiant Daughter

He struck her once on the side of the head, ringing her ears. Louise squeezed her eyes shut, gasping at the sting of his hand against her jaw and cheek. She kicked her wet skirt around and managed to send another shovelful of coal over the side. He came at her again, cursing, this time aiming a kick at her shoulder.

“Rupert. No, hey, no!” The younger man rushed to him, holding him back from striking her again. “She ain’t no good to us dead. The Lieutenant, he’ll want her in good shape. The better to bargain with.”

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.