Mary Perry: The Wild Princess: A Novel of Queen Victoria's Defiant Daughter

Everything that happened after that moment seemed to occur in slow motion, enabling Louise to fix each detail of the disaster indelibly in her mind. As she watched, transfixed by the horrific scene, the space between the two halves of bridge widened, more and more stones tumbling down and splashing into the river below. Then the entire slope of the roadway beneath their coach shifted, making her gasp at their precariousness. The road slanted downward, then settled momentarily, as if trying to decide whether it too would give up and drop away beneath the royal cavalcade.

All was mayhem in the coach—Bea and Alice sobbing, the duke trying to calm them, Lorne looking confused.

“We’re safer here than out there on the road,” the duke said when he saw Louise try to leverage herself out of her tilted seat and reach for the door.

She thought he might be right. Onlookers who had lined the bridge to watch the parade pass were running toward the shore, knocking one another down in their panic.

But then she felt the immense carriage, weighed down by its ornamental carvings and gilded embellishments, continue to grind forward despite the driver’s and footmen’s attempts to brake. It pushed the terrified, screeching horses ahead of it, ever closer to the brink.

A man wearing a white shirt rode up to their coach on horseback, shouting, “Jump. Jump now!”

Startled, Louise looked up at his face. Stephen!

He was here, with her, watching over them.

It took her less than a heartbeat to understand what Stephen meant, and why. As he slashed the traces with a knife, freeing the team of horses from the coach, letting them run back as they’d come, it became clear to her. He was afraid if the horses went over the edge and into the water, they would drag the coach over with them. Everyone still inside would drown. If they survived the plunge.

“Get out. We have to get out now!” she shouted.

Alice looked horrified. “How? The coach is tipping over. What if it falls on us?”

Lorne flashed Louise a look that told her he understood. He tried to open the lower of the two doors, but it was jammed.

The duke said, “It has to be up and out the other way. Ladies, follow me.” Standing on one of the seats he shoved against the door, now almost directly overhead. He’d barely broken the door open when something in the coach’s structure gave way with a loud snap.

“Go!” Lorne shouted.

The duke clambered through the door then reached down for his wife and pulled Alice, squealing in fright, petticoats and skirts billowing like a pink cloud, up and out. Louise felt the carriage still skidding forward, wood and metal screeching against stone. How far to the broken end of the bridge’s roadway? Did even ten feet remain?

Lorne grabbed Louise’s hand.

She fought his grip. “No! Beatrice. Take her next.” She shoved her little sister into his arms. Realizing from his hesitation he was about to argue with her, she screamed, “Go, Lorne! For god’s sake, go.” She shoved them both up and out the door even as the front wheel of the coach grated over the last crumbling stones.

The last one out, Louise poked her head up and through the door just in time to see Lorne and Bea tumble to safety. The fat body of the coach teetered, creaking on the stone lip. Beside the carriage, the white-shirted rider hastily dismounted. “Stephen!” she cried.

He ran to the edge of the broken bridge, reached for her, but she was too far away. She climbed halfway out on the broken carriage frame. He appeared ready to fling himself aboard even as she scrambled for a grip to pull herself the rest of the way out. But two guardsmen seized him by the arms and held him back.

And then she felt the coach beneath her go suddenly weightless as the blast-weakened stones supporting it finally gave way. Louise and coach plummeted down, down, down into the river.

“No!” Byrne screamed, as if by the sheer force of his voice he could stop the inevitable. From atop the ruins of the bridge he heard a sharp crack, the sickening sound of splintering of wood as the coach slammed into the bridge’s stone abutment, breaking apart the monstrous thing before it hit the water.

He stood in shock, unable to breathe, his gut a ball of fire. Never had he felt more helpless. More lost. The two men holding him back dropped his arms, called off by their sergeant. Faced with more pressing problems than protecting the queen’s agent they raced off to fight their attackers.

All about Byrne was madness. Gunfire echoed from the direction of the shore behind; the guardsmen who had been bringing up the rear were fighting off a heavily armed force. He should join them to protect the two princesses and other civilians trapped in the melee. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop staring down into the putrid, gray flow beneath him. At the bobbing wreckage of the royal coach.

Where was she? He stepped to the edge, prepared to jump in at the slightest sign of life. At least from here, above, he had a better chance of spotting her. There might still be a chance of getting her out, of her surviving. Oh, God, there has to be!

At first he could make out nothing but debris in the wretched, reeking confluence. Then a billow of white blossomed at the water’s surface, reminding him of a graceful, pulsing jellyfish in the dark water. As he squinted, trying to make out what the thing was, a long white-gloved arm appeared.

“Louise! ”

“Bloody fool.” A hand clamped down on his shoulder before he could step over the edge. “You’ll do her no good dead. Come, there’s a better way.”

Byrne hung back, trying to extricate himself from Lorne’s grasp. He looked across the open space where the middle span of the bridge used to be. The queen’s carriage had made it across to the other side before the blast ripped a hole through stone and mortar. Hussars now surrounded the boxy little brougham. Brown had taken one of their horses and was standing in the stirrups, trying to see what was happening on the other side.

“Take her on!” Byrne shouted above the sounds of battle, waving him off. His throat closed, blocking further words. If the Scot left now, the queen and heir to the throne would be safe with the bulk of her guard as escort. The Fenians seemed not to have yet realized that Victoria wasn’t in the coronation coach.

Lorne hadn’t given up tugging on his sleeve. “Move your bloody ass!” the marquess ordered, and this time Byrne snapped to action, drawing the Colt out from the hip holster where it had stayed to leave his hands free to reach for Louise.

They broke into a run, past the princesses and Alice’s duke, now surrounded and sheltered by the queen’s guard. Perhaps because of his love of the hunt, Lorne instinctively found the one hole in the fighting and made for it. Byrne followed on his heels.

An instant before they reached the foot of the bridge, Byrne caught a glimpse of a thin man in a dark cape, aiming a pistol at the running Lorne. He recognized Gladstone’s secretary, the Fenian officer.

Philip Rhodes’s first shot missed. Byrne’s shot didn’t. Rhodes staggered two steps, firing a second volley too wide and high to hit anyone, as a crimson stain spread across his chest. He fell to the ground; Byrne didn’t stop but felt satisfied the wound was fatal.

As soon as they were clear of the bridge, Lorne turned down the steep incline and raced, mud flying from beneath his boot heels, down the embankment toward a nearby boatyard. A covey of fishing skiffs, a barge, and a tugboat were docked there.

Believing he knew what the marquess had in mind, Byrne shouted, “We’ll never reach her in time, rowing.” Even putting up a sail would take precious minutes. And there was barely a breeze, this rare hot day, to fill the canvas.