Windsor Castle, March 1865 (Four Months Earlier)
YOU’RE HERE AT LAST!” Her Royal Highness Princess Louise jumped to her feet as Margaret entered the room.
“Oh, Lou, it’s so good to see you,” Margaret said, throwing her arms around her best friend.
As usual Louise stiffened slightly, bearing the physical contact only long enough not to offend, before she gently disentangled herself. “Sit, sit, and tell me everything. How are you?”
“Never mind me, how are you?” Margaret untied her bonnet and yanked off her gloves, throwing them carelessly onto a chair. “Are you truly fully recovered? Let me look at you.”
Louise struck a theatrical pose, turning her head from one side to the other before giving a little twirl. “See, fully mended, as good as new.”
Studying her closely, Margaret was reassured to find no trace of her recent illness in Louise’s enviably creamy complexion and sparkling grey-blue eyes. Her soft brown hair was as fashionably dressed as ever, with not a rebellious strand in sight, for Louise was extremely particular about her appearance. “I wish I had a modicum of your style. Even if I spent hours in front of the mirror, I couldn’t achieve such perfection. And you’re so slim. There’s not a pick on you, as my Molly would put it.”
“My waist and my age match perfectly since my birthday last week. Seventeen.”
“A claim I could not make, unfortunately, unless I was an old maid of twenty-five.”
“What you need,” Louise said, “is a dose of tubercular meningitis.”
“Is that what you had?”
“According to the doctor. Sick headaches is what I’d call it, but that wouldn’t justify the exorbitant fee he charges. I was very poorly, though not sick enough to persuade the queen to leave me behind at Balmoral.” Louise grimaced. “The train journey south was horrendous. They had to abandon me half-way, for I was too ill to continue, but I’m perfectly well now, I assure you.”
“You certainly look it.” Margaret flopped inelegantly down on the sofa. The little Scotch terrier which had been occupying the other end of the seat yapped enthusiastically and leapt onto her lap. She ran her hand along the dog’s wiry coat, setting his tail wagging frantically. “What a darling. So like my own precious Lix. I do miss my dogs.”
Louise pulled up a chair and set about making tea from the service which had been laid out in readiness. “That’s Laddie. He’s getting on a bit, so he likes to hide in here from the rest of the pack. They’re too boisterous for him, poor old thing.” She passed Margaret a cup of tea and a generous slice of cake. “I’m assuming you don’t want to bother starting with bread and butter?”
“No, thank you.” Ignoring the cake fork, Margaret took a bite. “Chocolate, my favourite.”
“I know.”
“Aren’t you going to have even a tiny slice?”
“Not even a crumb. I have no intention of ending up like Mama. Since Papa died, she has quite literally grown in stature, and she was never exactly sylph-like to begin with.”
“Oh come, Lou, in her early portraits she had a lovely figure.”
“A crinoline hides a multitude of sins. The queen has no discipline when it comes to the table.”
“Nor have I.” Margaret rolled her eyes. “Fortunately for the sake of my many, many new dresses, I have Mama to keep me in check. At least now I’m in London you and I will be able to see more of each other.”
“I hope so, though you know that the queen has first call on my time. She has become incredibly possessive of us girls since my father died, and actively discourages us from seeing our friends, never mind socialising without her. It’s all a bit oppressive. Tell me, how are you finding life in the capital?”
Knowing better than to offer sympathy, Margaret did as she was bid. “Well, the smells are absolutely foul. The air itself tastes disgusting, especially when there is a fog. It’s like licking a penny. And the dirt! It quite literally falls from the skies, I am forever having to wash my face and hands, and my petticoats are coated with what they call mud from the streets.”
“Horses,” Louise said cryptically. “Mostly.”
“Everything is so brightly lit, and so noisy, too,” Margaret continued. “The streets are full of people no matter the hour, and buildings everywhere seem to be in the process of being pulled down and rebuilt. I can’t sleep for the noise of carriages endlessly rattling past outside, and though I’ve been assured that the new gas lighting in Montagu House is safe, every time it makes that funny popping noise I jump.”
“Her Majesty considers gas lighting unsafe; she won’t have it here at Windsor. When I asked you how you liked London, M., I meant society, for thanks to the queen’s hunger for my company, I am forced to enjoy life vicariously, you know. You have made quite an impression, if the papers are to be believed.”
“Honestly, you would think they would have more important topics to write about than what gown I wore to what ball, who I danced with, and whether or not my dance card was full.”
“Now you have a taste of what my life has been like since childhood, living in the full glare of public scrutiny. It is why I make a point of always being perfectly turned out. One never knows who is watching.”
“Well, I’m not used to it and frankly don’t welcome the attention. At home in Dalkeith my only audience is a herd of cud-chewing cows.”
Louise giggled. “I’m not sure the gentlemen of the press would welcome the comparison.”
“Seriously, though, I have had scarce a moment to myself since I came to town. I have to change my toilette for every engagement, sometimes three or four times a day, and the Season doesn’t even start properly until after Easter.”
“I know you’re dreading it, M., but I wish I could have a proper debut. I would have loved to have my own coming-out ball, but the queen refused point-blank to consider opening the ballroom at Buckingham Palace.”
“Oh, Lou.” Margaret reached across the table to touch her friend’s hand in sympathy, thus committing two social gaffes at once. “Is there no sign of Her Majesty casting off her mourning?”
“Quite the contrary.” Louse contemplated the thin slice of bread and butter on her plate, then decided against taking a bite, instead helping Margaret to a second piece of cake. “Almost every single day since Papa died, Mama tells us that she longs to join him. We live on tenterhooks, for almost everything we say makes her weep—honestly, Margaret, you’d think that laughing was a cardinal sin. And when the queen is not wishing she were dead, I swear she is determined to make everyone around her die of boredom. Were it not for my sculpture lessons with Mary Thornycroft, I think I would go quite mad. I feel sorry for Mama, truly I do, but she is such tedious company, and she seems quite oblivious to the fact that Lenchen and I are no longer children but young women.”
“Goodness yes, your sister Helena is older than me.”
“She’s almost nineteen.” Louise pushed her own tea-cup to one side and picked up her sketchbook, idly flicking through the pages. “Last month we were invited to a fancy dress ball at Claremont. Lenchen and I were so excited, until we found out it was a children’s ball, and Arthur was to attend with us. We made the best of it. I wore a gown in the French style from Louis Quinze. White silk looped over pink and white satin petticoats. Naturellement, I designed it myself.”
“Naturally,” Margaret agreed. “And naturally, you were the belle of the ball.”
“Well, I did look rather wonderful. My hair was powdered, and I had the dress trimmed with old lace belonging to the queen which was a mistake, for seeing it brought on a fit of her megrims. ‘Oh, if only my dear Albert were here to share this moment,’” Louise said, aping her mother’s tone and wringing her hands.
“Stop! It is so wrong of you to make me laugh when her grief is very real.”
“And it has such staying power,” Louise said acerbically. “My father would be appalled to see her wear her heart on her sleeve as she does. You know how stiff and proper he always was.”
Margaret shuddered. “He was terrifying. He had a way of looking straight through me, as if I was so unworthy of his attention as to be invisible.”
“Better invisible than draw his ire by misbehaving.”
“Which you almost never did, Lou, for even when you have been naughty, you manage to shift the blame on to someone else. Don’t deny it—you know it’s true.”
Louise shrugged. “The trick, as I am forever telling you, is to keep a straight face and say nothing.”
Margaret fed the remains of her cake to Laddie. “My father says my face is a card-sharper’s delight, it is so transparent.”
“It’s true, M. I can always tell when my conversation is boring you.”
“You are never boring!”
“No, I am endlessly fascinating and you hang on my every word, but sadly not everyone is as entertaining. I am often bored, but I never let it show. That is why the queen finds me such excellent company.”
“How do you do it? Keep your thoughts from showing on your face, I mean?”
“Goodness, what a thing to ask. I don’t know—it is simply something one does.”
“It’s not something I do.”
“Then it’s something you’d better learn to do or you are going to find yourself in trouble sooner rather than later. You don’t want to get a reputation for being capricious.”
“Yet that describes you perfectly.”
“Ah, but nobody knows that apart from you, my dear M.”
“I know I sound ungrateful, but I’m not. I am perfectly well aware of how fortunate I am. Most young women would give their eyeteeth for the opportunity I am being given, to have a whole new wardrobe of gowns and to have every moment of the day filled with engagements.”
“Goodness, the duchess has been beating the duty drum hard.”
“With my sister Victoria accompanying her on cymbals. The problem is, Lou, I’m not here in London to enjoy myself. I’m here to do my duty and make a good match.”
“It’s what we both must do, sooner rather than later. It is the price we pay for being well-born and mere females.”
“Yes, but I wish I could marry later rather than sooner.”
“Unlikely, however, given that you are proving to be such a hit.”
“Heaven knows why! Mama is quite as perplexed as I am by my success. Perhaps it’s because it’s so early in the Season and there is little competition.”
“Or perhaps it’s because you are the Duke of Buccleuch’s flame-haired daughter—”
“Second daughter.”
Louise waved a dismissive hand. “I’m the queen’s fourth daughter, but in the eyes of the world all that matters is that I am a princess. Which means, of course, that if I were properly out in society I would spare you some of the press’s attention, for a princess trumps a mere duke’s daughter.”
“You are out now, though, aren’t you? You were at the ball at Marlborough House last week.”
“Did you read the report of it in the Times? I assure you, it was every bit as dull as it sounded. It was held to celebrate Bertie and Alix’s second wedding anniversary. Alix is expecting again, though of course you’d never know, for she is laced so tightly.”
Margaret winced. “One can’t help but wonder if it would be better not to squish one’s unborn child for the sake of fashion.”
“She wears a special corset which accommodates the baby,” Louise said, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “When she told me her happy news she was at home en déshabillé, and her interesting state was perfectly obvious. She was showing me the gown she’d had made for the anniversary ball, and I asked her how on earth she expected to get into it. So she let me see the contraption, as she called it.” Louise’s cheeks coloured. “It looked more like an instrument of torture than a corset.”
“Why wear it then? Breeding is perfectly natural.”
Louise affected a shudder. “You must not say breeding in polite company. Horses breed, as do farmyard animals and dogs. The populace procreate. But ladies—my dear, absolutely not. Do you know nothing?”
“Since coming to London, I’ve realised that my ignorance knows almost no bounds,” Margaret confessed. “How does one describe it more delicately?”
“One may admit to being in an interesting condition or expecting an event—but only to one’s female friends. In public, a lady must simply pretend that her unborn child doesn’t exist.”
“Well, I think that’s preposterous, given the amount of time a married lady spends with child.”
“Oh, I agree,” Louise said, abandoning her affected tone. “Look at my sister Vicky. She’s had four so far, in only six years. Can you imagine! It will be your sister Victoria’s turn soon, now she is married. I blame the queen, you know, for setting the fashion by having nine of us.”
Louise began to wander about her bedchamber, picking up and replacing the various statuettes, books, and drawing paraphernalia that covered most of the surfaces. “Now she has set the trend for inexorable grieving, and it’s suffocating. She is quite determined that no-one else be allowed to extract a single drop of joy from life if she cannot.”
“I hadn’t realised things were so dismal.”
Louise sat back down again. “I envy you your freedom.”
“The only freedom I have is to disappoint my mother on a daily basis now that we are under the same roof,” Margaret retorted. “If it’s not my hair, it’s my freckles or my figure. Or the way I enter a room—she says I burst in like a London bobby—or the fact that I can’t seem to retain my fan, never mind use it properly. Did you know, Louise, that one can communicate using a fan?”
“But of course.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Lenchen and I have our own secret language using cutlery,” Louise said with a mischievous smile. “We use it during those eternal dinners we have to endure with the queen and her entourage. It means we can make polite, tedious conversation with the inevitably polite, boring courtier sitting next to us, and at the same time hold a completely different conversation between ourselves just by rearranging a spoon or a fork.”
“No! Show me.”
“Certainly not, for you would try to use it, and your face would give you away and that would be the end of that. I shall teach you something more useful. I know—I shall give you a lesson in the etiquette of curtsying.”
“I was taught to curtsy at a very young age, when I was first introduced to your mother. You must have been three, for I was four and it was when I came to London for the very first time, for the state opening of the Great Exhibition.”
“We were thick as thieves from the start. Prince Albert never approved of our friendship, did you know that? He thought you were a bad influence on me.”
“Ha! Little did he know that it is the other way around.”
“I think you will find me a positive influence and a useful font of knowledge, when it comes to the ways of the world,” Louise said primly.
“Now that I cannot argue with. I will look to you as my guide as I am dressed up and paraded about like a bit of prime bloodstock at an auction.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Lady Margaret Elizabeth Louise Montagu Douglas Scott,” Louise intoned. “The second daughter and sixth child of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. What am I bid for this young woman, who has a large dowry and a most excellent lineage?”
“Don’t forget the added bonus of a mother who has proved herself a productive brood mare.”
“Margaret!” Louise’s mouth quivered. “I cannot imagine the duchess ever saying anything so vulgar.”
“Well, no, but I swear they have actually drawn up a list of my attributes. It is, I’ll wager, a very short list, mind you, but I am equally certain that they have a corresponding list of the qualities they require any potential husband to possess. Pedigree, social standing, estates, connections, income, politics.” Margaret wrinkled her nose. “All the important things. It wouldn’t matter to them if my future husband was ninety years old.”
“Oh no, ninety is far too old to father children. I’d say they would have set the age limit at sixty. Seventy at a push.”
“Stop! There is no way on this earth I could kiss a seventy-year-old man.”
“You’d have to do more than kiss him.”
“Eugh!” Margaret covered her ears.
“You brought the subject up, and one must face facts. As a Montagu Douglas Scott, it is expected of you.”
“But no-one seems to care that underneath I’m an actual person.”
“No, but when did they ever think of either of us in that way? It’s not as if it’s a surprise that you must marry, is it? And there are worse fates, you know. If I don’t marry, I will dwindle into eternal spinsterhood as Mama’s scribe, which I am determined not to do.”
“Oh no, that would be a terrible waste, for you have such an artistic talent.” Margaret’s face fell. “The sad fact is, though, that I have no talents to speak of.”
“Then I fear you have no choice but to resign yourself to the path mapped out for you.”
“I didn’t expect you to be so unsympathetic.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“I suppose you’re right. Let us have done with this depressing subject.”
“Yes, let’s. You are being formally presented at court in April, aren’t you? I expect I’ll be there in attendance with the queen as usual. Shall I wink at you as you make your curtsy?”
“Do not! I’ll be bound to giggle if you do, and then I’ll probably trip on my train,” Margaret said, torn between laughter and horror.
“Now I feel obliged to wink, just to see if you have paid attention to a single thing I’ve told you today. Who has the duchess employed to take your carte-de-visite photograph? If she has not yet made the arrangements, I can recommend Mr. Jabez Hughes. Here, take a look at this example he produced for my friend Sybil. Isn’t it lovely?”
Margaret studied the little card, which showed a stern-looking young woman leaning on a pillar. “Why do they always pose in profile?”
“Everyone has a better side, and a person’s face is more distinctive in profile.” Louise picked up her sketchbook and a charcoal. “Look, I’ll show you. Sit there with Laddie while I draw you both. In fact, let’s include your ideal husband in the composition. What is he like, do you think? Describe him to me.”
“Ah, there’s the rub,” Margaret said ruefully. “I have absolutely no idea. Someone my parents would heartily disapprove of, knowing me!”