His head whipped around. “Irish, is it?” He prodded her shoulder with a stubby finger and followed her as she backed away. “Another of those murdering bogtrotters. You and your kind are halfway to making orphans of my sister’s children.” His last words came out with a sob, and he shoved Kate aside.
Julia called, “Sergeant O’Malley?” He appeared at the men’s ward door. “Can you help me with this gentleman?”
The dustman ignored Julia. “Oh, so it’s SergeantO’Malley,is it?”
The man was a head shorter and two stones lighter than the policeman, but he tried to bump chests with the sergeant, glaring up at O’Malley’s face. The sergeant put his hand on the man’s shoulder, forcing him back a pace.
“How can we help you?”
“O’Malley.” The man shrugged out of the sergeant’s grip. “They’re sending the likes ofyouafter the bleeding bombers?”The dustman snorted. “No wonder the Irish bastards who killed that Manchester copper are still in the wind.”
The man tried to shove past the sergeant, but O’Malley’s bulk blocked the dustman. “Who are you looking for, sir?”
The man jutted his chin. “My sister.”
“If she’s here, you can rest easy,” O’Malley said gently. “They sent the less injured to this clinic. What’s your poor sister’s name?”
The man’s belligerence collapsed. “Alice Jennings. A nurse at the hospital, she … she told me they brought Alice here.”
“We’ll be making allowance for your troubles, but that lass at the front door had nothing to do with them. Now, follow me, and we’ll find your sister.”
Julia blessed the sergeant, thinking,We’ll need an army of O’Malleys to keep us from each other’s throats.
Hours later, an exhausted Julia finally opened Tennant’s first letter.
Lady Styles circled Marlborough House’s front lawn twice, thinking about a letter she intended to write. Then the clouds rolled across the sun, and a chilly December wind sent her indoors. Susan walked through the Blenheim Saloon, her favorite room. She loved the ceiling fresco, an appreciation she shared with Princess Louise. She found the princess looking atAn Allegory of Peace and the Arts Under the English Crown. Her finger pointed up, and she was counting.
“I make it twenty-five, Susan. That’s twenty-five female personifications of everything imaginable. “Look.” The princess gestured. “Do you see ‘Sculpture’ in that corner, carving a head?” She sighed. “Think of that.”
Poor Louise,Susan thought.It’s what she imagines for herself.A string of tutors had told her she was talented enough for professional training. Painting flowers or portraits was one thing; the queen herself was an accomplished watercolorist. Butchiseling in marble? The queen thought it had “something of the stonemason about it” and was inappropriate for a female royal.
“Princess Alexandra is resting,” Susan said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Louise shook her head, still gazing at the ceiling.
“I’ll be in my room for the next hour, writing letters for the Princess of Wales.”
In theory, “waiting” on the royal sisters-in-law was twice the work they’d hired Susan to perform. If by “work,” one meant waiting for Princess Alexandra or Princess Louise to decide if the day was fine enough for a walk, waiting to be summoned for a carriage ride, or waiting hours for a request that never came. By her second day of employment, Susan understood that “lady-in-waiting” described her job perfectly. But Lady Styles hid her amusement at the occasional absurdity and boredom of it all, aware that London’s toiling women would laugh at the wordwork.
With all that waiting and little to do, Susan had feared her royal service would throw Peter FitzGerald into her company. But their paths seldom crossed. Peter was the queen’s equerry, and the Prince of Wales gave his mother a wide berth. Besides, eight years was a long time.A lifetime.
They had married others. Peter wed the heiress of Josiah Cuthbert, “the Marmalade King.” Harriet’s money had rescued him, a second cousin of the Duke of Leinster. The fortunes of Peter’s family branch had faded two generations earlier. His wife’s settlement allowed the major to live like “an officer and a gentleman” of the Royal Irish Dragoons. And in a neat bargain, her father added his son-in-law’s silver-and-red coat of arms to the company’s jam jars.
Susan had married a baronet but paid a price for the title “Lady Styles.”
She realized her mistake on the wedding trip. And after four years that passed like four decades, the marriage ended suddenly and violently. Sir Augustus Styles spent his last night on earth whoring, gambling, and drinking to excess. In the morning, he’d roused himself for a foxhunt, downed two glasses of champagne, and broke his neck when his horse hesitated at a hedge, throwing him to his death.
My third year of widowhood.Susan had spent the time wearing hypocrisy literally on her sleeve. She dressed in deep black for the first two years, transitioning to “half-mourning” gray and mauve in the third. But the queen, still bereft six years after her husband’s death, was a stickler about the formalities of sorrow. So, Lady Styles swallowed her self-disgust and performed a charade of grief.
That afternoon, Susan sat at her writing table and set to work.That word again, she thought with a shake of her head. She had four letters to write: one to Alix’s dressmaker, another to the milliner, and a third “duty” missive to her brother.
Susan pulled a fourth piece of stationery toward her. But over the last letter, she hesitated. Then she penned a few swift lines to confirm an appointment for Monday, addressed the envelope, and sealed it.Done.
A servant tapped on her door and entered at Susan’s invitation. “Pardon me, my lady, but the Princess of Wales asks if you would wait on her. She is in her sitting room.”
Susan hid a smile. “Please tell Her Royal Highness I will attend her in ten minutes.”
Lady Styles pinned her mourning brooch in place and checked her hair and dress in the mirror. Then she gathered her letters to carry downstairs for a servant to post. But as soon as Susan handed them to the footman, she regretted the last one she’d written. She nearly called him back to retrieve the note she’d written to Dr. Julia Lewis, confirming an appointment.
