A Royal Christmas Quandary

by Samantha Hastings

  Alice finally stopped laughing, holding a stitch in her side. “Then where is Prince Friedrich?”

  Drina’s smile faded. Prince Friedrich had been invited to Windsor Castle as a possible suitor to Princess Alice, along with Prince Louis of Hesse. Drina contemplated making an excuse for her errant cousin, but she didn’t wish to deceive her dearest friend.

  “He’s not here,” she said at last. “His valet said he went to the village to drink English beer.”

  “Not a very promising start,” Alice huffed in annoyance. “I don’t want a drunkard for a husband.”

  “What about Prince Louis?” Drina asked with a fake smile. “This is his second visit, isn’t it? I remember he came with his brother to see the Ascot races in June, and I thought him excessively handsome then.”

  “He is very handsome,” Alice admitted with a sigh. “But I don’t feel like I know him at all. I feel true companionship is an impossibility for us—our interests are so different. I don’t think our thoughts will ever meet.”

  “Oh,” Drina said, not knowing what else to say. Few people in the world were as clever as Alice; she was a polymath and gifted with languages. “Our thoughts don’t always align and yet we’re the best of friends. Do you remember the first time we met? You’d escaped from your governess and we played hide-and-seek in the chapel.”

  She laughed at the memory and Alice even managed a small smile.

  “That particular bit of mischief was your idea,” Alice pointed out.

  Drina giggled again. “And then you told your mother that we’d only gone into the chapel to sit among the common people so that you could understand their point of view.”

  Reluctantly, Alice laughed, too. “I spared us both a strict punishment with that mistruth.”

  “It was a bald-faced lie and you know it!” Drina said, and gave her friend a playful shove on the arm. “Maybe you should play hide-and-seek with Prince Louis.”

  Her friend blushed rosily. “You know that none of the royal children are allowed to be alone.”

  “Your father’s rule, or Baron Stockmar’s?”

  “Baron Stockmar thinks Prince Louis shows a decided partiality for me,” Alice said in a flat voice. “Or at least in my family and fortune.”

  “Perhaps you just need to get to know him better,” Drina said hopefully.

  “Perhaps.” Alice turned away from her as she added, “My parents want me to pick a royal prince by Christmas.”

  “But that is only a week away!”

  “I know,” Alice said, still not looking at her. “But I’ve received royal suitors the entire year. And my sister was engaged at fourteen and married at seventeen. I suppose I should be happy that I only have to be engaged by seventeen.”

  Drina wanted to say something comforting, but she didn’t know what. Instead she put her hands on her friend’s shoulders and gave her a backward embrace, hoping that her friend could feel her love and support through it. They stood there silently for a time before Alice turned and pointed to the crimson dress laid out on the bed. “My mother would never let me wear such a revealing dress,” she said in a teasing voice.

  “My mother selected it,” Drina said with a wink. “I’m supposed to catch a husband in it.”

  “Oh dear, I don’t think there’s enough material here for two people,” Alice said, and they both laughed.

  Chapter 2

  George let out a string of curses and shook his head. He couldn’t believe that Drina—friendly, always-helpful Drina—had just left him in a lurch. He stopped watching her retreating figure, although it was quite pleasant to watch, and focused on the great lug in front of him. He tried to remember all the years of German lessons that he’d sat through with his tutor.

  “Herr Bauer—” he began.

  “Ja?” The giant smiled and nodded encouragingly.

  “That’s nicht, not your room, uh, Zimmer,” George said, pointing to the bedchamber behind him and shaking his head.

  Herr Bauer pointed to the room. “Sehr schön, danke.”

  George sighed in exasperation and decided to let the Crown Prince tell his valet that he was residing in the wrong room. He gave a small nod to Herr Bauer and left for his own room, which was only two doors down.

  There he sat on a wingback chair and took off his boots. What a day it has been. He, the son of a duke, had spent the entire afternoon waiting on a German servant. He dropped his head into his hands.

  He hated the Foreign Office.

  He hated foreign princes.

  And he hated his father.

  At least no one will know about my mistake. No one except Drina. And he wasn’t worried that she would tell anyone; Drina wasn’t like that. She had been his closest friend since childhood—their estates bordered each other.

  But something was clearly wrong with her. She’d been cold with him. Merely civil, as if they weren’t friends. He racked his brain again to think of how he might have offended her, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He’d danced with her at every party during the London season, often soliciting her hand for a second dance. And he’d always taken the time to talk to her whenever they met in the park.

  George shook his head. He understood females even less than he understood the German language.

  * * *

  Two hours later, George left his room dressed in a black suit, his wild hair slicked back. He walked into the reception room and saw his father, the Duke of Doverly. Unconsciously, his hands moved to his cravat in an attempt to straighten it.

  George lifted his chin in acknowledgement and turned to speak to his elder brother, Edward, Lord Dinsmore. Because Edward was the heir, he held their father’s secondary title, the Earl of Dinsmore. Edward was tall and angular like their father, whereas George was short and stocky, taking after his mother’s side of the family. Edward was also loud and obnoxious and never ceased to tease his younger brother. It spoke volumes that George would rather converse with him than their father.

  “By George,” Edward said, and laughed jovially at his own pathetic wit.

  George smiled politely. This particular joke, if it had ever been funny, was no longer. “How are you, Edward?”

  “Well enough, little brother,” he said with another guffaw. “You’d know yourself if you’d ever bothered to visit Emily and me at our estate in Sussex.”

  “I’ve been very occupied at the Foreign Office.”

  “Following in Father’s footsteps, eh?” Edward said. “I should’ve thought your feet too small. Your head certainly is—it barely reaches his shoulder.”

  Edward gave yet another hearty bout of laughter and slapped his thighs. George winced at the loud sound. He hated any reference to his unfortunate lack of height.

  “No one would ever say your feet or your head were small,” George said caustically, “literally or figuratively.”

  “You’re a clever one, George. I’ll give you that.”

  “Whether he’s clever or not remains to be seen,” the Duke of Doverly said in his whisper-like voice. He was a tall, spare man, with graying hair and sharp gray eyes. The only facial feature that they all shared was a rather large nose.

  George bowed to his father. “Sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me, sir.”

  “Well, you did sire me, sir,” George said. “Would you prefer I referred to you as ‘Your Grace,’ like a servant? Or am I to call you ‘Duke’ like Rothfield does?”

  “I want none of your wit, George,” he said, and tapped his cane loudly on the marble tiles. “Where is that dashed foreign prince you’re supposed to be entertaining?”

  “Prince Friedrich—”

  “Give the boy a dukedom, you’ve remembered the prince’s name,” his father rasped.

  “I expect to see him at dinner, sir,” George said. “You can hardly expect for me to watch him like a wet nurse.”

  “Expect? Expect?” his father growled. “I expect you do what you’re told. And I explicitly told you to keep an eye on the
Crown Prince of Hoburg. The last thing our government needs right now is a royal scandal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what are you doing here standing like a block?” his father snarled, tapping his cane again. “If you don’t want to find yourself on a boat to Austria, you’d better go and find him.”

  “Yes, sir,” George said between clenched teeth, seething with anger. “Or should I say, ja?” His father was treating him like a half-wit in front of his older brother. He gave his father and Edward a sharp bow, and then walked around the reception room searching for a face that looked foreign.

  Instead he found one that was all too familiar. He stopped in his tracks and gazed on her.

  Drina looked like a princess. Her golden hair was braided in circles around her head, a few loose curls framing her face. Her eyes were large and blue, the shade of the afternoon sky. Her lips were painted a Christmas red, and her crimson dress framed her lovely figure. The rubies on her neck and ears had to be worth as much as a small English estate.

  George caught her eye and smiled. Her immediate reaction was to give him a small smile in return, but then she abruptly turned away from him and began talking with the lady at her side.

  What is wrong with Drina?

  Not that he had time to think about it. He had to find that dratted prince. He made two more turns of the room, looking for Prince Friedrich. Both times Drina steadily avoided eye contact with him.

  George sighed in frustration. He left the main reception room and went down to the corridor where the prince’s rooms were (or rather at the moment, his valet’s). He knocked sharply on the door. The valet opened it a few moments later. He blinked at George and said in a slurred voice, “Herr Vorthington.”

  Clearly the valet had been drinking. He gave George a silly smile that highlighted his red face.

  “Where is the prince? Wo ist der Prinz?”

  The valet shrugged his large shoulders and shook his head, his cheeks as red as apples.

  “Hier, is the Prinz here?” George asked, pointing to the ground.

  The valet shook his head again and laughed.

  George pushed past the valet to see the empty room: The Crown Prince of Hoburg wasn’t in the castle.

  “Blast.”

  * * *

  By the time George arrived back at the party, everyone was seated for dinner and already on the second course. The dining table was very long, able to seat over fifty people. The center was decorated with boughs of holly and ivy. The plates were golden, as was the silverware, and the goblets were made of delicate glass with gold on the rim.

  He was seated by his sister-in-law, Emily, and of all the bad luck, his mother, the Duchess of Doverly. She was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and held the title the Mistress of the Robes. His mother was in charge of the queen’s jewelry and clothing. George often thought that his mother spent more time with Queen Victoria than she did with her own family. As a small boy, he only saw his mother every few months and never for very long.

  Her brown eyes looked at him in typical disapproval. “George, where have you been?”

  “On an errand.” He looked down the table to see his father scowling at him. He pretended not to see him, but he couldn’t miss the empty seat between Drina and her mother, Princess Rothfield. The seat reserved for the missing prince.

  His mother shook her head. Her brown hair was now streaked with gray and the lines around her eyes and mouth were more pronounced. She looked older than when he’d last seen her … whenever that was.

  “Please try to be punctual for the rest of your visit. You owe it to your Queen.”

  “Yes, Mother,” George said. He tried to catch Drina’s attention, but she didn’t look in his direction at all. Not once during the next ten courses. She smiled and laughed with the honorable Lord Francis Weatherby. George had never liked Weatherby, or the large gap between the man’s front teeth.

  “Why so glum?” Emily asked.

  George turned his attention from Drina to his sister-in-law, who was only a few years his senior. She was plump and pretty with curly red hair and a dazzling smile. She was unfailingly kind and much too good for his brother.

  “Father has me looking after one of the foreign princes,” George said, scraping his fork against the golden plate. “And every day is a misery working in the Foreign Office with him.”

  “Why don’t you tell your father that you’re not interested in foreign affairs?”

  George raised one eyebrow. “Are you at all acquainted with your father-in-law? When has telling him anything ever made the slightest bit of difference?”

  Emily stabbed her duck with a fork and cut it with her sharp golden knife. “Never, but you’ve turned eighteen. You’re a man now. You should take charge of your own destiny, George.”

  “That’s difficult when he controls the money.”

  “Edward said you had a wealthy godfather.”

  “Yes,” George admitted. “Unfortunately, he’s still very much alive.”

  “Bad luck,” Emily said with a mischievous smirk.

  Yes, it was. He was dependent upon his father, which meant he had to do his job well: He had to find that dashed prince without anyone being the wiser.

  After dinner, the party left the dining room for dancing in the Grand Hall. Christmas trees hung from the ceiling, most covered with bonbons and wax-colored lights. A couple of the trees even appeared to be covered in snow. Which is impossible, George thought, because it was devilishly hot in the room.

  He looked around for Drina, but she was already dancing with Lord Weatherby. He waited impatiently by the side of the room, watching them during the entire dance. Weatherby’s eyes wandered much too freely on Drina’s surprisingly seductive red dress, and his hand was rather low on her waist.

  George longed to hit the man with his glove and call him out for a duel, but unfortunately duels had gone terribly out of fashion. So instead he simply glared at the man until the dance was over. Weatherby must have noticed, for he escorted Drina to the opposite side of the room. And by the time George got there, Drina was off dancing with another man. George didn’t recognize her partner. He had a foreign look to him. What George did know was that he didn’t like him.

  Not.

  One.

  Bit.

  George followed Drina so closely that when the man released her hand at the end of the dance, he was there to take it.

  “Shall we?” George asked as he took Drina’s hand and led her back to the dance floor.

  The orchestra began to play a German waltz. He placed his other hand on her waist and was all too aware of her proximity—and in that shocking dress. He tried to keep his eyes up, though he failed more than once. Drina, however, seemed to be unaware of his eyes, she so steadily avoided them. She was a much better dancer than he, and consequently, she was leading.

  “You’re doing it again,” he complained.

  “What?” she asked, finally looking him in the eye.

  “Leading,” he said. “I’m supposed to lead.”

  “Well, you’re not very good at it,” she retorted.

  “No, I’m not,” George admitted, with a sheepish smile. “And I’m afraid that I need your help again.”

  Drina lifted her chin and narrowly led them away from crashing into another couple. “It appears that you do.”

  George liked that they were the same height so he could look directly into her blue eyes. “Your cousin isn’t back yet.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I hope he isn’t drunk or in any sort of trouble with the locals.”

  Not as much as George hoped—prayed, even. His father would put the blame at George’s feet if something happened to the prince. He always did.

  George clenched his teeth. He had to find that stupid prince before he caused a scandal, and George knew exactly whom to ask for help—the only person he trusted implicitly.

  “That is why you have to come with me to find him.”
>
  “But I can’t,” Drina said, sounding upset. And when she was upset, he could hear a faint accent in her voice.

  “Why not?”

  “Propriety and all that.”

  “Hang propriety.”

  “You would need a lot of rope,” she said.

  He laughed and then leaned forward, her curls tickling his chin pleasantly as he whispered in her ear, “Please?”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the only person I know who has ever met the man.”

  “What about my mama?” Drina asked with a small quiver of her lower lip. George knew that meant she was trying hard not to smile.

  “She’d attract too much attention with that tiara,” he replied dryly. Not that it wasn’t true. Princess Rothfield was wearing a tiara that made Queen Victoria’s crown look like a common trinket.

  “My father speaks German flawlessly and he should be able to recognize my cousin.”

  “Couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tell my father,” he pointed out. “They’re old cronies.”

  “I don’t think he would.”

  “Better not chance it,” he said, taking lead of the dance. He waltzed them to the edge of the room. Reluctantly, he released his hold on her waist and offered his arm. She placed her small hand lightly on his forearm.

  “Meet me at the Edward IV Tower in an hour,” George whispered, then led her back to her mother. Lord Weatherby stood there waiting, ogling Drina as they approached.

  Weatherby asked Drina for the next dance. Before she could answer, her mother blurted, “My daughter would be pleased to dance with you.”

  George saw Drina roll her eyes before taking Weatherby’s offered hand—his eyes never left Drina’s chest. George longed to punch the man. But then he saw his father walking toward him, no doubt ready with another lecture. Desperate, George turned to the first lady he saw and asked her to dance. It was Lord Weatherby’s little sister, Lady Clara.

  The young woman giggled. “I should be delighted to, Lord Worthington.”

  He took her hand and led her to the dance floor, making his escape from his father. Lady Clara was a good dancer, but her giggle annoyed him, and she laughed the entire dance. If that weren’t bad enough, he kept seeing Lord Weatherby attempt to press himself closer to Drina. Time after time she outmaneuvered him with a sidestep, a dip, or a turn.