Seducing the Princess by Mary Hart Perry Read Free Book Online

with Henry. They would talk of intelligent matters, compare preferences of foods, music, opinions of a political nature. He would describe his travels with the royal navy to places she’d never seen. She’d respond by expressing an interest in seeing foreign lands. He might catch her subtle message ( Take me with you. Oh, please! ). He’d understand, where others had not, that she was more exciting, more daring than she appeared.
    It was such a pleasant fantasy, still spinning through her mind, her mother had to grasp her arm and give it a shake to rouse her.
    “What is wrong with you, Baby? People are waiting for us.”
    Beatrice wanted to scream, I am not your baby! I am a grown woman with a name and a life of my own.
    But was that really true? A name, yes, she had that—but not a life. She was chained by duty to her mother. She whispered, “Sorry.”
    Victoria folded her own arm around her daughter’s as they moved in slow motion up the aisle, out of the incense-perfumed church and into the sunlit courtyard. The queen leaned toward her to murmur, “There is trouble brewing. I feel it.”
    Beatrice felt a momentary jolt of panic. Had her mother found out about her unsupervised adventure with Henry?
    Then she followed Victoria’s gaze toward the wedding party. “Surely not. Vicky and Louis look in perfect bliss.”
    “Not the bride and groom.” Her mother’s voice sounded pinched, testy. “Vicky’s papa.”
    Beatrice studied the Grand Duke, standing proudly beside the bride and groom with his younger daughter Elle on his arm. A shadow of sorrow grayed the happy family portrait. Alice should be here , she thought.
    Her sister Alice, the duke’s wife, had died not long before their brother Leo passed, due to complications of his hemophilia. Both her siblings had left her at relatively young ages. But whereas Leo had been a fragile child from birth, cursed by the bleeding disease that haunted European royalty, always needing to be protected and worried over, Alice had been the very picture of health until diphtheria struck the Grand Duke’s court. Then, despite doctors’ warnings, she had insisted upon personally nursing her family and eventually perished from the disease herself.
    “What is wrong with the Duke?” Beatrice hoped her brother-in-law wasn’t sick. She found him a delightful man—generous, handsome in a fatherly way, always ready with his charming sense of humor to lighten family gatherings haunted by the specter of Prince Albert and, now by Victoria’s renewed grieving over her son and daughter.
    “He invited that woman to the wedding,” Victoria snapped, her tiny eyes sharp as flint and throwing off sparks. “Can you imagine?”
    Beatrice followed her mother’s glare as it shifted toward a cluster of guests standing in the courtyard, beneath an early-blooming rose arbor. She didn’t have to guess which woman had annoyed the queen. She stood out, a strikingly sensual figure, outshining every other woman in view. She looked to be only a few years older than Beatrice, wore a daring crimson gown that contrasted dramatically with her dark hair. Rubies the size of song-bird eggs glittered at her throat. Her pretty eyes rested on Beatrice’s brother-in-law, across the garden, with obvious adoration.
    “She’s beautiful,” Beatrice whispered. “Who is she?”
    “No one, dear child. No one you will ever need to meet. I shall tell the duke she must be made to leave. She is not welcome at dinner.”
    “But if she is his guest—“
    Her mother’s stony glare cut off her objection. The queen raised her right hand a few inches, and one of the duke’s attentive footmen immediately stepped forward. He leaned down when the queen motioned him closer. She whispered a few words to him, and he left, his expression neutral.
    Once the wedding party had moved back inside the palace and were seated at their assigned places along the single, long banquet table set—Beatrice had heard—for 340 guests,