Даниэла Стил - Royal

“It’s the only thing she cares about,” he answered for her. “She’s been horse mad ever since she could walk. She’s a bruising rider, and extraordinarily skilled.”

“I want to be a jockey,” Annie added bravely, “but women are not allowed.”

“Maybe you will be one day. And I’d be happy to arrange a tour of our stables in Newmarket with Lord Hatton, the royal racing manager.” She smiled at them both. “We have some rather famous horses there. I’m horse mad myself. And your mother was too. She was just about your size. If the papers are genuine, you both take after my great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, who was no taller than you are. You’re the perfect size for a jockey if they ever change the rules.”

“I hope they do,” Annie whispered and the queen smiled and stood up, and then something caught her eye.

“You’ll be hearing from us as things proceed,” the queen said formally, but she was staring at Annie’s arm. She was wearing the gold bracelet with the heart that Lucy had given her. “May I look at your bracelet?” she said in a voice softened by emotion as Annie extended her wrist. Queen Alexandra recognized the bracelet immediately as the one she had taken from her own wrist and given Charlotte when she left for Yorkshire. “May I ask where you got that?”

“My mother gave it to me. My mother Lucy,” she explained. There were tears in the queen’s eyes when she nodded. “I gave it to your mother, my sister Charlotte. It was mine.” There was silence for a moment, as the Queen Mother cried silently and Jonathan spoke up.

“Thank you for seeing us, Your Majesty. I know it’s a visit we’ll never forget,” he said with a bow, and Annie curtsied deeply to both Majesties, her grandmother and her aunt.

“If things go well, the first of many visits, I hope,” the queen said generously, and her secretary appeared from nowhere, and all three of them backed out of the room, and the two palace guards in livery closed the door, as the queen turned to her mother with a sigh. They had left the leather box, and its contents, with them to authenticate.

“She looks just like Charlotte, doesn’t she?” The Queen Mother nodded and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t get too excited, it could all be a trick. People are too clever sometimes. They may have noticed the resemblance and decided to take advantage of it. It could be purely coincidental. I hope that’s not the case, but it’s possible. It would be lovely to have Charlotte’s daughter in our midst. She seems like a very sweet girl.” Seeing the bracelet had shaken the queen and gave her hope that Annie and the strange story were real.

“Her stepfather is a simple man, but polite and without pretension. He seems to care about her a great deal. I thought he was sincere,” the Queen Mother commented in a serious voice. The meeting had been deeply emotional for her.

“Let’s hope they’re honest people and it all turns out well.”

They had spent half an hour with her, which was longer than the queen normally spent with non-cabinet visitors, but she and her mother had been anxious to see the girl. Princess Victoria was in Paris, so hadn’t come, but had wanted to meet her too when the queen told her sister about her. Nothing like this had ever happened to them. Long lost relatives didn’t just turn up, or never had before. She was hopeful that they were telling the truth. It was like having a piece of Charlotte back after so many years.

—

Annie was smiling broadly when they got into a cab and headed for the station, after thanking the queen’s secretary for his help. He had been charmed by Annie, who looked more like an elf or a fairy than a girl her age. She was so small and delicate, and looked like the photographs he had seen of Princess Charlotte in the Queen Mother’s rooms. He had worked for her before when she was queen.

“They were so nice,” Annie said, looking awestruck, and Jonathan was impressed too. It was the high point of his life so far. They had been to Buckingham Palace to meet the queen.

“Maybe if she’s really my aunt, she’d let me ride one of her horses one day,” she said with dreams in her eyes.

“Oh Lord,” Jonathan said. “She has racehorses worth millions. You’d be a lucky girl if that ever happened. Just seeing them at close range would be a gift.”

She smiled at him then. “I’m lucky anyway. I love you, Papa. Thank you for bringing me here.” All he could think of as they rode toward the station was again how grateful he was that Lucy had told him about the leather box, and let him see its contents, before she died. Whatever she had done, for whatever reason, and no matter how wrong it was, she had redeemed herself. With luck, Annie would be restored to the family where she belonged. Even if he lost her as a result, it was his fondest hope for her. To atone for his wife’s sins, out of love for his stepdaughter, was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

Chapter 11

Their visit to the queen and Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace had a fairytale quality to it. Even if nothing came of the authentication of their documents, and whatever investigation they were sure to conduct, it was exciting to have been to see the queen. No one knew that they had been there. Their life in Kent on the Markham estate seemed like drudgery after that. Annie exercised the horses as she always had, and Jonathan was working with the new horses to break. Their life was hard without Lucy, and their evenings sad. Annie missed Lucy terribly, her warm contact and their brief conversations when they saw each other at the end of the day. Annie took over from her grandmother and cooked dinner for her father and the twins every night, and the boys complained about her cooking. But Jonathan and Annie agreed that family meals were important.

The house seemed so dreary without her mother. And it was a rainy spring, which made it worse. They felt as though they hadn’t seen the sun in months.

There was no word from Sir Malcolm Harding, the queen’s secretary, for nearly two months. Jonathan wondered if that meant the documents had been discredited or rejected, but they heard nothing either way. It was almost as though nothing had happened, and they’d never been to see the queen. Annie began to suspect she wasn’t royal after all. It didn’t really matter. She was happy as she was, living with her father and brothers. She had more work to do than before, trying to step into her mother’s shoes, doing the laundry and the cooking, picking up after them. They tracked mud into the house, grumbled about doing homework. She felt like the mother of two teenage boys since her mother’s death. There were days when it all seemed like too much. Too much energy, too much work, too much complaining, too many men in the house who messed everything up as soon as she cleaned it. There was no woman she was close to. She saw only the grooms in the stables, who were her age, and her father and brothers at night.

They went to dinner at a local restaurant in Kent on her birthday, and the day after, Sir Malcolm called to tell them that all of the papers appeared to be authentic.

The handwriting on the Queen Mother’s letters had been verified. The letters from Henry Hemmings appeared to be all right. The town hall county record office near Ainsleigh had registered all the documents. Charlotte’s cause of death on her death certificate had been a discrepancy, and the doctor who had attended the birth was long dead, but a nurse who had worked for him remembered how distressed he’d been when Charlotte had hemorrhaged shortly after the delivery. She had died after childbirth, but the nurse recalled that the countess had asked the doctor to list the cause of death as pneumonia to spare her parents embarrassment, since neither the pregnancy nor her marriage were known to her parents at the time, so the doctor had agreed. The marriage certificate was genuine. The vicar was still alive and had verified it, and said they were lovely young people and very much in love on the eve of his going to war, and Henry died shortly after, so the vicar was glad that he had married them, and had therefore legitimized Annie’s birth. And Her Majesty the queen had instantly recognized the little gold bracelet Annie was wearing, that the queen had given to her sister Charlotte. Annie could have gotten it from someone else, which all of them thought unlikely. It was credible that she got it from Lucy, who probably found it among Charlotte’s things after she died, along with the papers and letters. And the Queen Mother had acknowledged the brown leather box as hers as well.