IT WAS SHOCKING, REALLY, THATthe royal family patronized an event like Epsom Downs. The stands below were full of laborers in shirtsleeves, their mouths full of sausage rolls and oranges, the peels and wax paper strewn carelessly over the seats.
Certainly this was nowhere as civilized as Ascot, where everyone at leastdressedappropriately. Where gambling was done discreetly, among gentlemen, instead of with ragged shouts at the betting post.
“He’s not in the royal box,” Agnes remarked, so quietly that only May could hear. “Where do you think he went?”
There was no need to clarify whichheshe meant. They both knew Agnes was talking about Prince Eddy.
“He’s probably just visiting someone.” Or placing a bet, or watching a cockfight out on the grounds.
The other guests of Agnes’s parents—mostly wealthy Americans, with a smattering of British aristocrats—milled about the box, holding glasses of lemonade and staring down at the racetrack. May’s gloved hands closed over the railing as she dared a quick glance around the stands.
The Posonbys’ box was to the right, filled with the sort ofsecond-rate nobility May would expect from them. Further along was Lady Leticia Dreier, looking absolutely terrible in aneau deNilhat—really, someone should tell her that color made her skin look positively green—and who was she talking to? May couldn’t tell from this distance, but she suspected it was one of the Cubitt boys: all four of them were tall and lanky, with that reddish-blond hair. As Agnes had said, the royal box yielded no sign of Eddy, just the red-faced Prince of Wales and his wife.
Then, a few boxes further, she caught sight of Eddy.
“He’s in the Hardwickes’ box,” she told Agnes. Not all that surprising; Charles Hardwicke was the sort of nobleman Eddy gravitated toward: poorly educated and charmingly ill-behaved.
Agnes adjusted her hat, refastening the silk bow beneath her chin. “You’re going to the royal box soon, aren’t you?”
For a panicked moment May thought her friend was fishing for an introduction, but Agnes just sighed longingly. “Surely you want to thank them for inviting you to Balmoral? Please, promise you’ll write me with every last detail!”
“I’m only there as a guest of the Princess Maud. I’m not really part of the royal party,” May pointed out, but Agnes waved away the protest.
“It doesn’t matter how you got there! The important thing is that you’ll be there at all!”
May still couldn’t quite believe she’d been invited. Ultimately, she had Agnes to thank, since without Agnes’s prompting she wouldn’t have ever grown close to Maud. Over the past months, May had slowly built up a relationship with Eddy’s sister. It had started with the occasional “surprise encounter” at church or in Hyde Park—encounters thatwere carefully staged, of course—but the real turning point had come when May devoted more time to the Needlework Guild.
Like all gently born young women, May had stitched a shirt or two for the guild every year since she was a child; it was the sort of token charity work that was expected of her station. But once she’d learned how deeply Maud was involved with the guild, May had started volunteering there, too. Now she spent several days a week at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, checking lists and sorting clothes into enormous cloth bags, with Maud at the table next to her. It was tedious work, but every last stitch had been worth it when the invitation to Balmoral arrived.
Though Queen Victoria rarely wrote to White Lodge, May had recognized her stationery at once. The royal crest bloomed at the top of the page: a blueVRfor Victoria Regina, the letters overlaid one atop the other with the emblem of a crown on top. Curlicues swirled out from the letters like tendrils of a creeping blue vine.
My dear Mary Adelaide,the letter had begun; typical of Queen Victoria to send the invitation through her mother rather than directly to May.
I should be most delighted if May and Adolphus could join us at Balmoral soon. We shall have a merry party with the Wales family in attendance, and it would be a delight to have your two children along as well.
May had been horrified at her mother’s response: that Dolly couldn’t make it, but she, Mary Adelaide, would be utterly delighted to accompany her daughter to Balmoral.The queen had blatantly ignored the suggestion, and replied that May could journey with Princess Alix of Hesse by train, chaperoned by one of Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting. The queen and the Waleses would already be at Balmoral when they arrived, having gone up to Scotland earlier in the month.
“What are you going to pack? Do you need to borrow anything?” Agnes offered.
“I’ll be all right, thank you.” May had accepted far too much of her friend’s generosity already. Agnes had bought her several new gowns—now that Linton & Curtis had May’s measurements on file, it was easy for Agnes to keep ordering them—not to mention all the small gifts she kept bestowing: a set of cream-colored gloves, a newly trimmed hat with gleaming dark feathers.I bought it by mistake; it’s not my color,Agnes would say, orI’m tired of it and want the space in my wardrobe, please take it off my hands.May knew she should refuse, but it was just so lovely seeing the warm concern in Agnes’s eyes. The look of afriend.
And each time she put on one of the new dresses, May felt a touch braver, as if some of Agnes’s American boldness had rubbed off onto the fabric.
“At the very least please borrow some of my trunks! You’ll need them for the train,” Agnes was saying. “You’re going with Alix, right? I wonder how long the journey is.”
“It should take a day. We’ll sleep on the train and arrive in the morning,” May explained.
Her friend lifted an eyebrow. “Plenty of time for you to find out how the long-distance courtship has been going.”
“Poorly, I would imagine, given what a notoriously bad correspondent Eddy is.” May sighed. “Not that it matters.We both know why Alix will be there.” Unlike May, who’d barely scraped herself an invitation through Maud, Alix had been asked to Balmoral by the queen herself. May suspected that Victoria had been waiting for this trip since last summer, when she’d first suggested that Eddy and Alix start courting. She would keep shoving Alix and Eddy together every chance she got—which meant that May would have to work a thousand times harder than Alix if she wanted a fighting chance.
“Perhaps Alix will break off the courtship herself. Didn’t you say she isn’t very interested in His Royal Highness?”
The hot sun was making May uncharitable, or perhaps her own long-simmering resentments had bubbled to the forefront, because she blurted out, “Alix isn’t cut out to be queen. She can’t even handle a performance at the opera without collapsing into hysterics!”
A trumpet blared down on the course; the race would start soon. The other guests began pressing forward, eager for space along the railing. Agnes seized May unceremoniously by the elbow and tugged her backward.
“What did you just say?”
